


The Art of Love

by ThatStarlightKid



Series: Glimadora Week May 2019 [2]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Adora is super friendly, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Alternate Universe - Normal High School, Alternate Universe- Science class, Angst with a Happy Ending, Artist Glimmer, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Glimmer is just grumpy, Jock Adora (She-Ra), Jock Catra, Nurse Angella, Partners to Lovers, She has to deal with some internalized homophobia, Slow Burn, THERE’S ONLY ONE BED, Teacher Weaver, all pretty fluffy but there is some angst, an absolute angel, and just a smidge of Crack, but don’t worry there is a happy ending, slow burn Glimmer/Adora
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2020-07-27 22:55:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 50,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20053885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatStarlightKid/pseuds/ThatStarlightKid
Summary: (I do not give my consent for this work to be transferred to any other sites, or apps such as Fanfic Pocket)Glimmer is just your normal, incredibly tired high school student who would like to do nothing more than simply fade out of existence (or at least out of her chemistry class). Instead, she finds herself stuck in said chemistry class paired up with Adora- the school’s most popular soccer player and Glimmer’s least favorite pathological liar.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Just your classic high school au enemies to friends to lovers plot featuring Jock!Adora and Artist!Glimmer. I’ll be posting the next chapters on here soon but if you’re impatient, feel free to read ahead on my tumblr (or just come hang out with me on that blue void- that’s chill too) @starlightinhumanform.

Glimmer slumped forward into her seat and piled her bag of art and supplies onto the desk. Her teacher’s eyes flicked up directly in front of her, making it seem like a spotlight was shining over her head. Why did she have to sit right next to the teacher’s desk?

“Do you have a late pass?”

Her eyes snapped from side to side incredulously, “No?”

The teacher clucked, “Don’t sound so surprised- you’re late!”

“By two seconds! Besides,” she swung her arm out to draw Ms Weaver’s attention over to the two soccer girls chatting in the corner, “they’re not even sitting down!”

Ms Weaver’s scrutiny didn’t shift from Glimmer’s face for even a second, but the two girls were staring at her now. They were both wearing high-waisted shorts and the red shirts of the school soccer team- ever popular, ever beautiful. Adora was the taller of the two with blond hair kept tightly in a ponytail that hypnotized anyone who walked behind her with its rhythmic swing. She was Ms Weaver’s favourite and everybody knew it.

“Stop making a spectacle, Glimmer,” Weaver’s voice brought her back to the present, “Now, if you don’t mind, I would like to start the class.”

Glimmer huffed and glared at the other girl who was sticking her tongue out in her direction. Her name was Cateline or something like that but everybody just called her Cat.

Glimmer rolled her eyes and shifted to face the front of the room as the girls walked (or rather sashayed) to their seats and put her head down on her desk. She let her mind wander as Weaver’s voice droned on a few feet ahead of her. The paint spots splattering the canvas bag lying on her desk always became exponentially more interesting in her chemistry class. She hummed softly, rocking her head gently from side to side from where it rested on the crook of her bent elbow.

“… so I’ll be choosing your partners.”

Those cursed words brought Glimmer’s mind crashing back into focus. She shot up, “What?!”

Ms Weaver glared at her and hissed her words through gritted teeth, “Maybe if you payed attention you would know what’s going on.”

Glimmer sunk down into her seat and tried to hide her face behind her art bag, her face burning and her stomaching churning. She could hear the class giggling and snickering around her.

“Are there any relevant questions?”

Behind her there was movement.

In front, Weaver sighed, “Yes, Kyle?”

“When are we going to find out who we are partners with?”

“Now, actually,” Weaver reached for a paper, “Know that these are almost completely random- except for a few I know would have been disasters- and these are final- no changes, no negotiations. That being said: Cat, you’re with Scylar; Kyle, you’re with Lonnie…”

As she continued to read through the list of students, the pace of Glimmer’s tapping foot sped up as her anxiety grew proportionally higher.

“-and Adora, you’ll be with Glimmer…”

Glimmer groaned quietly and let her face sink even further into her arm. 

Ms Weaver came to the end of her list and Glimmer felt her glare momentarily pause on her curled back as the woman scanned over the class, “Well? What are you waiting for? Get to your partners and get it work!”

The classroom erupted into scuffling chaos filled with “Should I move over there or do you want to come over here?” “Hey, that’s where I was going to sit!” and “Wait who’s my partner?”; Glimmer didn’t move.

The seat next to her that had recently been vacated was refilled by a hesitant red splotch in her peripheral vision. Glimmer refused to react, unsure of what to say or do in the presence of ‘Miss Perfect’ herself and instead continued staring at the plastic wood of the desk only inches from her face.

Weaver was moving towards her hunched form; her red pencil skirt swished and her red pumps tapped on the floor as she walked, stopping a little left of Glimmer.

“You know, Adora,” she purred, “I really am sorry you had to be paired with… her, but I think you’re the only one in the class who could pull it off.”

She wasn’t even trying to whisper or keep her voice down- she wanted Glimmer to know what a failure and a nuisance she was.

Glimmer couldn’t help but growl under her breath, a sound that didn’t even escape the suffocating cave of her arms she was creating around her head. It’s not like she asked to be here. In fact, she’d rather be in any other class, in any other situation, with any other partner.

Ms Weaver swished and tapped away into another direction; off to reign terror over some other poor student.

The sound of the classroom was reaching a volume hardly ever seen in the presence of Weaver- a kaleidoscope of yelling, and discussing, and laughing-the room was filled to the brim with noise. That is, filled everywhere except the roughly 5 square feet around her and Adora. There seemed to be a bubble around them filled with a sense of awkward uncertainty that muffled the sounds of the other partners.

A hand suddenly moved to place itself on Glimmer’s still-hunched shoulder and she flinched away, but it was too late. She couldn’t go back to pretending she was a tightly curled ball now that she had proved she could actually move.

She settled on rolling her eyes and letting out a huff, “What do you want?”

Adora blinked in surprise and Glimmer realized how harsh her tone had been- oh well.

“Oh! Well, um, to work together, I guess?”

Her voice was softer than Glimmer had been expecting, but Glimmer knew better. Her soft voice and pretty eyes and her charming laugh were all a cover up for what a snake she was. She had to be- that’s the only way somebody could possibly climb up the rigorous mountain that was high school’s social hierarchy.

“Fine. What do we need to do?” Blunt. Short. Simple. The sooner she could get this over with, the better.

Adora took a deep breath and spread her hands over the desk as if she were smoothing the folds in a skirt, “So we need to make a Bohr’s model of an element and then we need to make a poster about it with that information.”

She pointed to the projected screen and Glimmer looked up in that direction just long enough to registered the fact that there were words on the screen.

“K. I’ll do the model, you do the poster.”

“Oh,” Adora glanced down for a moment before looking at Glimmer again, “Ok. I wouldn’t mind working together more, though, if you wanted?”

“Nope. This is fine,” Glimmer turned to begin rummaging through her bag for her notebook as if she could pretend the other girl wasn’t sitting next to her.

“Do you know what the Bohr model looks like?”

Glimmer whipped around, seething and with her short, bobbed hair swinging against her cheekbones for a few moments in reaction to the sudden movement, “I’m not stupid.”

Adora was taken aback and a small amount of satisfaction seeped into Glimmer’s rage.

“I’m not stupid, I’m not lazy, I’m not useless! I’m not anything Ms Weaver or you and all your nasty little friends say about me!”

If Adora was taken aback before, she was shocked now, “I- I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply anything!”

What was that: scared? apologetic? Glimmer didn’t believe either.

Adora’s face seemed to glitch for a second, “Wait- we don’t say those things about you?”

“Yeah? Then what do you say?!”

“Uhhhh,” she bit her lip and looked from side to side, “No offense, but uh, we don’t really say anything about you.”

Glimmer let out a “humph” and rolled her eyes again. She was getting close to breaking her record for most eye rolls in a 20 minute period, “What element are we doing?”

“Oh, uh…”

Could she stop saying that? Could she stop acting like she was so surprised every time Glimmer opened her mouth?

“Well, we need to choose an element. Together.”

Yuck. If Glimmer ever heard Adora using the word ‘together’ in reference to the two of them again, she would probably (no, definitely) puke.

“What about Hydrogen; that’ll be the easiest, right?”

“I think Lonnie and Kyle already took it,” she gave an apologetic frown.

“Right, fine. Lithium?”

“Penelope and Maha.”

“Calcium?”

“Elizabeth and Heith.”

Glimmer let out an exasperated cry that sounded slightly like she was being strangled, “Sodium god damn it??”

“Noelle and Sebastian.”

“Heliu- wait. Noelle isn’t in our class! She isn’t even in our grade!”

“Oh yeah, haha…” She gave Glimmer an awkward grin as if that could explain whatever the hell she was trying to do.

“Ok, why are you lying to me about this stuff?! You’re obviously making up that list as you go along- there’s literally no way you could know what elements everybody has! So what are you trying at; do you want me to fail?”

Glimmer’s firery anger was exploding again, little flames of tone lashing out at Adora as she spoke. The other girl looked surprised, as if the idea had never occurred to her and that she hadn’t expected Glimmer to be mad about lying to her.

Surprise shifted to embarrassment and a red blush settled over Adora’s cheekbones.

Why did she have to look nice even when she was all red-faced and flustered? It wasn’t fair.

Adora was poking her two index fingers together as she spoke, “Ok so, I really wanted to do this one element, Bismuth, but I wasn’t sure if you’d go for it?”

Glimmer blinked at her; she didn’t have a clue about what was going on.

“Sorry,” Adora gave a lopsided grin to compensate for… whatever she had tried to do.

“Why? Why that element; what’s so special about it?”

Adora giggled and the blush deepened to to almost scarlet on her pale skin, “Ok so like, I’m gay and like, uh, it’s gay. Ya know, bi-smuth. I would prefer lesbian-smuth, haha but, oh well…”

She shot finger guns in Glimmer’s direction and tried for a smile, but her clenched teeth just made her look more awkward, “Also it’s a rainbow so, you know, that’s cool too.”

Glimmer’s brain was short circuiting: what? The gay disaster in her head was lighting up all sorts of colours- many of them she didn’t like. She usually felt a certain sense of camaraderie with other people in the LGBT+ community and a pull started growing towards Adora; a rainbow coloured rope that wrapped around her waist and pulled by an invisible force. On the other hand, Adora simply repulsed her; she was annoying and snarky and arrogant. There was no place for someone like her in Glimmer’s world.

Adora was still rattling on, “-I mean, of course, I’d get it if you don’t want to do that, I totally-“

“I’m gay too.”

“What?”

“You go for girls right? I do too.”

“Oh!” Again with the look of surprise on her face; it made Glimmer struggle not to roll her eyes, “Cool! So, uh, could we do Bismuth or…”

She looked at Glimmer with big, round puppy-dog eyes of the clearest blue. It wasn’t fair she was so pretty while Glimmer had to sit here looking like a paint-covered potato. What a brat.

Glimmer let out another exasperated sigh and threw her hands into the air; god knows what sort of revenge someone of powerful as Adora could get if Glimmer didn’t follow along with what she wanted, “Yeah fine, let’s go ahead and do it.”

Adora’s blinding grin would have been a nice sight if Glimmer didn’t see through it to the venom, “Great! Thanks!”

She jumped forward, obviously attempting to give Glimmer a hug only to be met by a stare dripping in icicles.

Adora retracted hers arms with a quiet, “Oh, right. Sorry.”

Glimmer shifted towards the far edge of her desk to in an attempt to create more space between them. She remembered something about how increased volume decreases pressure, but maybe that only applies to gases and not people.

She pulled out her Chemistry notebook and was suddenly embarrassed for the art, stickers, and glittery puff paint adding a quarter inch of height to the cover; she wanted to prove that she wasn’t the ditz everyone was convinced she was but here she sat with a notebook that looked like it belonged to a fourth grader. She glanced at Adora who had pulled out her notebook now; it was plain black with “Chemistry” written aggravatingly neatly in silver sharpie. Glimmer began scolding herself in her mind for feeling ashamed for the over the top style she had always enjoyed. And since when was she trying to prove anything to anyone? Why should she care if they think she’s stupid; that’s their problem and she didn’t care… did she?

Adora had noticed Glimmer mistakenly staring at her while the turmoil boiled in her head but apparently hadn’t noticed the scowl she was wearing. The soccer girl gave her a cheery smile, looking almost hopeful. Hopeful over what?

Glimmer blew an unhumored puff of air through her nose and shook her head as she turned away from Adora once again.

“I like your notebook,” She sounded sad, hurt even; Adora was probably the strangest person Glimmer had had the inconvenience to interact with.

She threw open the cover of her notebook with as much aggression one can possibly direct at an object covered with 3D unicorn stickers.

Glimmer pulled phone out of her pocket so she could get a reference to base the model on. In the searches, an image of the metal popped up. It was quite rainbow. Maybe there was hope for this project anyways.

She tapped on an image and set her phone to rest on the side of her bag before hunching over to begin sketching her plans for the model and brainstorming possible materials. It was a relief to settle into a situation that was familiar and far more comfortable than being forced to talk to Adora. This entire class period had been one nightmare scenario chasing after another. Now, she could just focus on the paper in front of her, on the way her pencil made dusty, smooth curved lines in contrast to the ridged blue ones pre-printed on it. This was her world: the smell of graphite and the small scritching sound the tip of her pencil made as it met the glossy sheet.

But, of course, things could only go right for Glimmer for a few minutes at the most in this class. Her light source of flickering fluorescent bulbs set in the ceiling tiles was blocked out after only moments by the looming figure of Weaver. 

Glimmer glared up at her, refusing to move her body, “Can I help you?”

“I just hope you’re working. I know you sometimes struggle with staying on track or accomplishing anything productive.”

The patronizing words boiled in Glimmer’s veins and she straightened out to make direct eye contact Weaver. Furious; that’s what Glimmer was. It was obvious Glimmer was working on her project and that should have been easy to tell from where Weaver was crowding her space. She just wanted to embarrass Glimmer and call her out in front of everyone. And that had certainly been accomplished; the entire class was unblinkingly watching them except for the guy two rows ahead who was watching what looked suspiciously like porn. Why didn’t Weaver bother him??

Glimmer’s face continued to grow red as the urge to yell back grew stronger. Unfortunately, the sensation of barbed wire being wrapped around her throat was growing stronger as well and she began praying that she wouldn’t burst into tears in front of everyone.

She was about to retort back something that probably would have gotten her suspended or at least landed her in detention when a voice beside her quipped, “Actually, Ms Weaver, we’ve gotten a lot done!”

Glimmer didn’t even try to hide the incredulous look on her face; why would Adora get involve with this? This had nothing to do with her.

Weaver raised an eyebrow at Glimmer before turning to address Adora, “I’m sure _you_ have, dear, but you don’t need to cover for your partner if she’s not doing her work.”

Adora’s eyebrows knit together as if she were confused, “No, really! We’ve got a lot done and Glimmer’s been helping with the planning a lot!”

Glimmer couldn’t help but look at her like an idiot. Was she so much of an airhead that she didn’t understand no matter what Glimmer did, Weaver would still pick on her? Had she really never noticed before?!

The glowering teacher strutted away with a final, “Hmm, well don’t work yourself too hard for the sake of your partner; it’s not like she cares but her grade anyways.”

Glimmer shot a scalding glare at her teacher’s back before curling around her notebook once more and again picking up the steady rhythm of pencil strokes on paper.

“I don’t know why she does that,” Adora’s voice startled her out of the space she had settled into inside her own mind, “She has no right and it’s cruel.”

“Yeah, well,” Glimmer snorted without looking up, “that’s what you get when the teacher hates you.”

“It’s not fair though! You get your work done and I _know_ your grade is pretty good so-“

Glimmer spun around, “Wait a second, how do _you_ know anything about my grade?! That’s weird as hell!”

A pink began creeping its way onto Adora’s face again and her eyes widened in shock, “Oh god sorry, that does sound weird! Um let me explain? So sometimes I come after school to grade for Weaver for volunteer hours and I just noticed that you do really well on your tests and I just remembered that when Weaver was, well, basically just calling you lazy just then.”

Glimmer stared at the other girl for a second trying to figure out what the hell was going on for maybe the 50th time that period, “You say that as if it’s supposed to make it less creepy? Why are you paying so much attention to my grades and why do you remember them??”

“Um… just because I thought it was strange that she picked on you so much and didn’t really have a reason to?”

Yup, Adora was, without a doubt, the strangest person Glimmer had ever met.

“I just don’t know how you can like her,” Glimmer muttered under her breath and certainly not expecting a response.

“I don’t!” Adora almost seemed to be laughing.

Glimmer once again shifted from where she had been attempting to resume her work to face Adora (GOD this girl was distracting), “What do you mean you don’t like her?? You’re her favorite!”

“So?! That’s not my fault!” She was definitely laughing now and it made Glimmer mad, hearing what a nice of a sound it was, “I didn’t ask to be her favorite!”

“And I didn’t ask to be her _least_ favorite,” Glimmer grimaced in Adora’s direction.

The smile fell from her face, “Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to-“

“Look can we just back to work?!” Glimmer snapped. She didn’t like how personal this conversation was getting; it made an uncomfortable anxiety begin bubbling up somewhere in her stomach that needed to stop right now.

Just as they both scooted in opposite directions, hoping the space between them would dissolve the awkward silence, the bell rang it’s annoying, screechy laugh that always made Glimmer jump.

Adora grabbed her bag and flashed Glimmer a smile that would have been kind or maybe even excited if it were real, “See ya tomorrow!”

Glimmer returned it with a grimace that she hoped conveyed how unfortunate she found that fact before grabbing her things and stomping her way out of the classroom without looking at anyone else.

This project was going to be hell. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading; I hope you enjoy and I’m sorry for any spelling mistakes.  
All kudos and comments are so so appreciated.  
Come hang out with me on tumblr @starlightinhumanform (I’m lonely and bored- come scream with me)  
Love you all 🖤✨


	2. Chapter 2

Going into Chemistry the next day was a struggle for Glimmer; it always was but today there was added hesitation in her step. The thought of having to sit so close to Adora, to talk to her was making Glimmer’s skin crawl. She began regretting eating that sandwich for lunch only minutes before as it now seemed to be making its way back up her throat.

She swung the door to the classroom open with a punchy jerk backwards and shuffled in, careful to not look anywhere but her feet. Despite this, she could feel Weaver’s eyes on her as she sat down just as the bell rang.

“Not late today, I see, Glimmer,” Weaver’s voice rang out across the room and Glimmer’s face burned red.

She glanced around the room at all the faces turned in her direction before slumping forward on her crossed arms again. Adora’s scowl was among the turned heads and it made Glimmer’s nausea increase tenfold. How dare she act as if she were friendly and sweet yesterday, then turn back today to judging and staring at her. Adora was just trying to twist Glimmer around her pinky finger she like she had the rest of the school. But she wouldn’t fall for it like all those airheads did.

Glimmer rolled her eyes and was surprised at the feeling of disappointment sinking to her gut. Did she really think Adora was being genuine? Of course she didn’t; so why was she blinking wet eyelashes in response to Adora doing exactly what she was _always _going to do. It was probably better she do it now than once Glimmer had been tricked into trusting her charming smile as something real.

Weaver stalked in front of her desk, bringing herself even closer to Glimmer than usual and far closer than Glimmer enjoyed. She clipped forward wearing the same red pumps that aggravated Glimmer to no end and placed her hands behind her as if to brace herself on the table.

She scanned the room and set her face in her customary scowl, allowing her eyes to stall on the empty seats before beginning to speak to the class as if they were the ones absent, “I don’t know why you can’t just come to class. It’s not that hard and we have work to do.”

Weaver glowered at the lowered heads in front of her and Glimmer made sure to bend her neck as far as she possibly could without looking like she was being possessed so only the crown of her dyed-pink hair could be seen from the teacher’s view point.

“Speaking of which, I hope you can get more done today than you did yesterday,” she sighed through her nose, “Well, get to work.”

Glimmer’s stomach flipped as seats squeaked and shuffled on the linoleum floor and students began grouping into their pairs. She didn’t want to listen to Adora’s soft laugh again, knowing it was fake; forced to pretend she didn’t hate every shake of that ponytail; keeping her eye rolls in check just long enough to pass this stupid class.

Glimmer didn’t try to hide the stress building up in her head like a pressure front before a storm. She cradled her face in her hands as if her palms pressed to her eyes could keep the hot tears filling them from spilling out. She shook her head, trying to dislodge all the thoughts swirling through her mind. _They’re all staring at you, you know that right? Adora is going to think you’re a baby and she’ll be right. You’re just proving everything Weaver says about you; it’s no wonder all these people think you’re stupid. _

Glimmer froze at the sound of clipping heels near her seat and prepared herself for whatever insults Weaver was about to throw at her.

“This doesn’t look very productive, now does it?” Weaver’s voice was smooth but managed to bite in a way that made the back of Glimmer’s throat burn.

She moved her hands from her face and clenched them into fist beneath her desk. Glimmer’s hair created a curtain between her and Weaver that she refused to part; it protected her from the cold gaze of her teacher and allowed her to burn holes into her desk that she wished she could direct at Weaver, the intensity of the sun in her eyes.

Glimmer opened her mouth to stutter out something, anything in response when another pair of shoes jogged over, “Actually, Ms Weaver, we were about to get to work!”

There was a smile on Adora’s voice that made Glimmer’s insides complete another somersault.

It wasn’t until Weaver let out one last unhappy grumble and the sound of her heels clipped into the other direction that Glimmer allowed her face to turn upwards. Her eyes locked with Adora’s momentarily, burning with the same strength that had been directed at her desk.

“Hey,” Adora’s voice was filled with could have concern in anybody else’s, “You’re looking kind of overwhelmed; do you want to take a break outside for a few minutes?”

Glimmer gave Adora a glare that could have rivaled that Sarah Desert’s heat, “I’m fine.”

“Oh.”

Was that hurt she was trying to play? Glimmer could tell it was a role, just a part of some game Adora was trying to moderate- and she wouldn’t get tied into it. No, ma’am, she would not.

“Well, I’ll be at my desk when you want to get to work,” she flashed Glimmer a grin before prancing to her desk in the back the room, her signature hair swinging behind her.

Glimmer rolled her eyes; what a patronizing brat. She turned to look behind to where Adora was sitting, opening up a school laptop to work like the perfectly productive student she was.

Whatever gods controlled this world were poking fun at Glimmer by making her move to the back; sitting here at her desk she could at least pretend that nothing was out of the usual or that this assignment never happened and she didn’t have to talk to perfect, stupid, pretty Adora.

She glared at the body filling the seat next to her; if they hadn’t sat there, Adora could’ve already been there flashing her fake smiles and telling Glimmer what to do. Glimmer wouldn’t have to make the trek across the classroom in which everybody else was already seated, her feet the only ones moving in the room. To get to Adora’s desk she would have to walk in the middle aisle where everyone could turn and see her and wonder why she hadn’t moved yet like everyone else and whisper to their partners about why there were tear streaks staining her face.

The idea of having to make deliberate steps towards Adora made what little stability she had in her body vanish into a writhing mess. It went against her most basic principles: Glimmer was not the type to associate with snakes.

Glimmer let her body go limp, her head hanging like an anvil attached to the base of her neck. The longer she waited, the more questions would be asked when she finally did get up. She took a deep breath and straightened her back; this was just a new challenge. Glimmer loved art assignments that forced her to try to something new, something she had never experienced and gave her room to experiment and learn. That’s all it was: a new project, a study into how little she could interact with her class (especially Adora) and still do well.

She glanced back again at Adora who grinned and waved as if beckoning her to the desk.

_Has she been watching this whole time??_

Glimmer swiveled her body away as quickly as she could, gritting her teeth; if Adora had been looking at her now, how long had she been watching Glimmer falling apart because she had to walk to another desk?

Glimmer inhaled sharply through her nose before standing up stiffly; she _had_ to move now that Adora had seen her looking back there.

One foot, then another; one foot in front of the other. The back of the room came a lot sooner than Glimmer had been expecting and she slid into the seat next to Adora.

The blond moved her chair an inch or two closer to Glimmer’s; how repulsing, acting so friendly and sweet as if she wasn’t glaring at her only minutes before for being on time. Glimmer resisted moving her chair in the opposite direction and settled for leaning away. She just prayed Adora didn’t mention anything about how long it took for her to get the stupid desk or, even worse, trying to offer that blatant caricature of sympathy.

“Ok so, this what I have for the poster so far,” Adora waved at the screen in front of her and Glimmer let out a sigh of relief at the avoidance of the subject, “What do you think?”

Glimmer attempted to focus on what Adora was showing her when she realized she was actually asking for input. It certainly looked nice; a light pastel rainbow weaving its way through the text. Who could have known Adora was one to appreciate an aesthetic theme? Giving it a second thought, it didn’t surprise Glimmer; Adora was supposedly perfect in every way so why wouldn’t her completely correct work look nice as well?

“Yeah. Looks great.”

Adora beamed at Glimmer’s grumbled response, “Really? You think so?!”

Glimmer raised an eyebrow almost involuntarily, “Why does it matter so much?”

“Well I know that you’re a really good artist so it just feels nice to hear you say that it looks nice,” Adora gave a small smile and shrugged, her shoulders rising like the warm blush reaching upwards on her cheekbones. Once again it hit Glimmer how unfairly nice Adora looked even when she was turning red.

Why was she blushing though? What reason would she unless she was admitting to something? Then it hit Glimmer, “Have you been looking through my damn art as well? You creep!”

She was hissing her words out because it was the only option she saw other yelling loud enough for the whole class to hear. How rotten could this girl get?!

Adora drew back quickly as if she had just been slapped, “What? No! I just- I’ve seen your art; almost all of us have- you draw in class all the time and some of your stuff is up in the halls!”

She was rushing out her words as if terrified, like a someone accused of murder trying to stutter out their alibi.

Glimmer allowed herself to relax backwards from where she had rushed forward into Adora’s face. They were both still tense and Glimmer began thinking maybe she had spoken too soon. Adora might not be someone to be trusted as genuine but that didn’t mean she was be sneaking around to look at Glimmer’s art. What motive would she have anyways?

Despite how stupid Glimmer was feeling, she was struggling to apologize to the girl in front of her. No matter how startled she looked, Glimmer knew at least part of it was a front put up to lure Glimmer into the trap the rest of the school had fallen into, “Sorry I snapped at you. It’s not like you’d have an opportunity to look at my stuff anyways.”

Adora still looked slightly shaken- why did what Glimmer say make such a difference to her?- but she managed a tiny quirk in her lips, “We’re not all out to get you, you know? And we don’t think you’re stupid. I’m not your enemy, ok?”

Oh, wow. This was just classic manipulation. Glimmer wondered if she had told everyone else the exact same thing; pulling everyone aside at one point or another to tell them that they could be buddy-buddies. Maybe she had her speech written down somewhere.

“Yeah. Ok, sure.”

Adora snorted, “What, do you really think I am out to get you? Why would I do that?!”

Apparently Glimmer’s agreement hadn’t sounded as factual as she had thought, “Look, I don’t know; can we just do our work?”

She got a sigh in response; did Adora really expect her to become one her idiotic groupies just because she had said something about “not being enemies”? Fat chance.

Adora turned away to do her work in silence but not before glancing at Glimmer one last time. She pulled off the “sad” look really well.

Glimmer shifted and pulled her phone out of her bag in a way she hoped was stealthy and pulled up the text conversation with her best friend:

_Bow I need help. I’m sitting next the annoying soccer girl. The one I told you about from yesterday_.

**You mean Adora? I don’t know why you don’t like her **

_Because she’s FAKE _

**She’s really nice Glimmer You should try being friends with her**

_No thanks I try not to befriend plastic _

**Glimmerrrrrrr she’s not totally fake **

_YES she IS _

**Do you actually have any proof of that? **

Glimmer blew an exasperated puff of air out of her nose from the lack of support from her friend and began typing faster.

_Yesterday she was pretending to be all against everything Weaver says about me and then today she was agreeing with Weaver despite the fact I was actually ON TIME TODAY_

**Why don’t you ask her about it? You said yesterday that she told you she didn’t like Weaver. She might just be pretending so that she can get volunteer hours and honestly I don’t blame her lol **

_Or maybe she’s just pretending so that I’ll think she’s nice so I’ll join her hoard of brainwashed followers. _

**Glimmer I like her. Are you calling me brainwashed?**

_No Bow you know I’m not. It’s just,, we both know nobody REAL gets to be as popular as she is_

**Maybe that’s not true maybe that’s an assumption that doesn’t fit her **

Glimmer let out a huff and shoved her phone back into its pocket in her backpack just as Weaver stalked over.

“How is the work going Glimmer?”

Glimmer made unblinking eye contact with the woman standing several feet taller than her from where she was sitting, “It’s going _great_.”

Weaver smiled, “If I see that phone one more time, I’m taking it.”

“I need that though,” Glimmer opened and closed her mouth, not knowing how to explain her situation; how she never knew if her mom would be able to pick her up after school because of her unpredictable job, how she waited for that call, how if it didn’t come she would have to walk through the not-so-safe parts of town and how it everything felt so much more safe if she could call someone.

“Then I suggest you keep it put away,” Weaver used that same stinging purr from earlier that Glimmer hated so much.

“But I, I-“ she made eye contact with Adora who had looked up from where she was hunched over her work just long enough to see what a stuttering mess Glimmer had become.

“She was just looking up some information about our element because I had forgotten it.”

Weaver raised an eyebrow as she shifted her attention to rest on Adora, “Oh really? Then why would she hide it just as I waked up like someone who was feeling guilty?”

“Maybe because when she was clearly using it to work yesterday, you began bothering and insulting her.”

Glimmer had never heard Adora say something with such a sharp tone and certainly nothing directed at Weaver.

The teacher seemed equally surprised, blinking at Adora in silence before finally speaking, her voice as cold as the metal of a cleaver, “I see.”

She turned the other way and marching towards the front of the room, her gate seemingly stiffer than usual.

Glimmer turned towards Adora, “Why would you do that? You know she’s never going to let you volunteer again, right?”

Adora shrugged, “She probably will.”

Glimmer kept staring, expecting more from Adora who just turned to focus back on the screen again.

“You didn’t answer: why did you that?”

Adora’s hands froze over the keyboard for several moments without any kind of movement before she finally shifted to look Glimmer directly in the face, “Maybe it’s because I really do think how she treats you is wrong? Maybe it’s because I wouldn’t mind being your friend because I actually do think you’re smart and talented? Maybe it’s because I am on your side and because I am _so_ confused why you think you need to fight me, fight _everybody_.”

Glimmer held her gaze before shrugging and turning away. Adora didn’t need to know about her personal life; it would just give her more to work with so she could brainwash her, “I’m going to start on the model tonight but I already have all the materials- don’t worry.”

“I wasn’t,” Today Adora was the one sounding blunt.

“What?” Glimmer figured the girl was just mad just she wouldn’t open up and get all friendly out of the blue. 

“I wasn’t worried that you didn’t have the materials or wouldn’t get it done or whatever you were telling me not to worry about.”

“Oh. Ok.” Glimmer didn’t look up from where she was doodling a sample of metal Bismuth. She didn’t understand why Adora was making a big deal out of everything. Maybe this was the second phase when people didn’t suddenly fall in love with her.

“I’m not worried about this project because, despite what you might think, I’m not just a mini-Weaver who thinks you’re lazy and can’t do anything.”

Glimmer didn’t hold back the eye roll this time, “Wow, nice. Thanks.”

Adora opened her mouth to say something and even reached out her hand to touch Glimmer before drawing back. Glimmer liked to think that it was because of the biting glare she had thrown in Adora’s direction but maybe it was just the girl’s common sense kicking in and telling her that it wasn’t the way to win Glimmer over.

Glimmer centered her attention on the paper in front of her; like yesterday she was grateful for its comforting distraction. She allowed herself to be absorbed in the swirls of colour she was creating, the shine of the metal giving her something to focus on other than the shine of the student next to her. She was basing the image from her memory of the picture she had pulled up yesterday and she could already hear Ms Perfectionist next to her critiquing the inaccuracies.

And, just like yesterday, something had to go wrong and her comfortable bubble was popped. Today, it was some idiot bumping the table, causing her carefully lined up pencils to spill to the floor. Luckily, Glimmer had been able to jerk her hand away from the page quickly enough to spare the drawing from being ruined. (It was a good thing too because Glimmer would have actually screamed). That didn’t change the fact, however, that her pencils were rolling across the floor to whatever free-land pencils go to when they disappear forever.

Glimmer ducked under the table to began gather them up and was able to grab almost all of them in just a few seconds. She was reaching to get one from where it had stopped under the next desk over, trying to get it before the owner of the desk noticed her, when a soft hand was placed on her shoulder. It startled her and she jolted upwards, slamming her head into the table top above her.

“Ow,” she shot at Adora with a glare.

Adora didn’t seem to notice; her hand had been brushed off when Glimmer had turned to glare at her and was now hanging limply. Her eyes seemed unfocused in the direction of Glimmer’s paper and her mouth was hanging slightly open. She turned her glazed eyes to look in Glimmer’s face in awe, “Glimmer that’s amazing. And, what, you’ve been working on it for like 20 minutes?!”

Glimmer shrugged. She seemed to do that a lot around Adora; maybe it was because she never knew what was going on with this girl, “Closer to half an hour, but yeah.”

“Can I use this on the poster?” Adora was practically drooling over the paper.

“Sure?” Glimmer squinted up at the other. Maybe this was attempt number three at convincing Glimmer that Adora actually wanted to be her friend and wasn’t just trying to enlist her in her throng of followers. It wasn’t working but Glimmer had to admit she did seem pretty genuine this time.

The bell rang and Adora offered Glimmer a hand up among all the scuffling people and chairs.

Glimmer waved the hand away and managed something between a smile and a grimace, “I have to finish picking these up.”

Adora gave her one last small grin before picking up her stuff and starting to walk away.

“Adora!” Glimmer called out, “Go ahead and take the drawing if you want it. I’ll probably just forget and throw it away if you don’t.”

The girl reached behind her and delicately picked up the piece of paper, still seemingly in-awe. Glimmer didn’t know what she was trying to do, but she certainly was playing the role well. Adora flashed her a wider smile this time and turned once more to leave the room.

Glimmer watched her go from where she was still crouched on the floor. Adora was wearing purple today and Glimmer had to admit it looked nice; but that should have again been no surprise since Adora could pull off anything.

Glimmer grabbed the last pencil and shoved the whole bunch into her bag. She could bet fairly certainly that Adora was more organized than her. How aggravating. She swung the straps of her bag over her shoulders and began trudging out of the room. She had to admit that it was nice not having to walk past Weaver on the way out.

She didn’t like sitting next to Adora, but there were perks. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again I apologize for any spelling mistakes and I hope you enjoyed!  
All kudos and comments are so appreciated.  
Love you all 🖤✨


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok kids this is where shit starts to get real good

Glimmer liked her room; it was covered from top to bottom with posters and old art projects and on one of the walls was a mural that she and her mother had painted years ago.

Currently the floor was littered with wire, clay, and several pallets of paint. Like her room, Glimmer’s face, hands, and arms were covered in smudged splotches of colour. She hummed softly to the song playing in the background, moving her head gently from side to side in time with the music. She stopped her swaying to hold the paint brush in her hand as if it were a microphone, miming a karaoke solo.

This was Glimmer’s natural environment; surrounded by art and creating some of her own. Here, she was free of judgment from anyone else and, for once in her life, knew exactly what she was doing; she was _comfortable_.

Her phone buzzed with a text notification and she frowned at the Unknown Number flag. It was probably just a wrong number or some sort of scam, but it was worth looking at.

She used her thumbprint to open it and scowled even deeper at the message:

**Hey it’s Adora! **

_What do you want?_

_Actually more importantly how did you get my number?_

**Bow gave it to me **

Glimmer raised her eyebrows; this was a level of traitorism she had never thought Bow capable of. She switched to her and Bow’s conversation, making sure to leave Adora on read.

_Wtf?? You gave Adora my number? Without asking? _

_No wait I take it back you shouldn’t have to ask me- you know I hate her. _

She wished her words could convey the growl she was directing at her phone as she shaking fingers typed but she settled for sending a stream of profanity.

Once again, she changed the conversation pulled up on her screen. The blue light reaching into her eyes suddenly seemed very harsh.

Adora was typing and the blinking dots undulating in that friendly little line made her sick. Not because she was worried about what Adora was going to say (she couldn’t care less) but because of how betrayed she felt.

**I heard Weaver was going to be having a surprise check on the models tomorrow **

_So? _

**We need to have the model done or almost done or Weaver’s gonna mark our grade down **

Glimmer curled her lips incredulously at the piles of art supplies surrounding her and let out a small laugh.

_Yeah well that’s not happening _

**Please Glimmer I really need to get an A on this. Are you sure you can’t get it finished tonight?**

_Ok #1 yes I’m sure. I have a life outside of making models of atoms. #2 You can afford not to get an A on everything. Got it, princess? _

**Please Glimmer. I can help. Is there anything I can do so that we can meet up before school and put it together then? **

_No cuz I have all the supplies and everything here and with the clay I’m using, it has to dry on the wire. _

**Ok um well I’ll just do the model? **

_Ha. Weaver’ll find out in a second, you’ll get complete credit for the project and I will get a big fat 0 (which by the way, I ACTUALLY can’t afford) _

**Then what do you want me to do? I’m trying to be helpful. Let me help??**

_Nope_

**Why not?? I mean seriously? Why don’t you just accept help? **

Glimmer struggled to resist the urge to fling her phone across the room. God, it was so obvious in her head why she couldn’t accept help, especially from Adora. If she accepted it, she would be admitting defeat, admitting she couldn’t handle things on her own, admitting that Adora was more capable, that everyone seemed to be more put together than Glimmer in her floundering world. Not that she was going to let Adora in on any of that.

_You wouldn’t know how to do what I want. _

**You could show me **

_What? _

**I could go over to your place and help and you could show me what you want me to do. Besides, you already said that all the materials are over there! **

**I mean, if that would be ok with you. **

Glimmer rolled her eyes; that was the last thing she wanted and very, very far from _ok_.

_Where did you even hear about this whole stupid “surprise check”? _

**From Weaver. I heard her talking to another teacher while I was volunteering. **

_Lmao she’s still letting you volunteer after earlier today? _

**Yeah lol I told you she would **

Glimmer noticed to small grin that had momentarily spread across her lips and grimaced in response. Why should she care if Adora was still kissing up to Weaver or not?

_Why does it matter so much if we pass this check or not? _

**She said that if we don’t, she’s going to to mark off 30% of our total grade. So the highest we could get would be 70% **

The sickening feeling settled into her stomach with a definite sort of permanency. There would be no way for her to bring her grade up to a B if she got a C on this project now. Assuming they did everything else right (which knowing Glimmer’s luck, they probably wouldn’t).

She groaned and threw her head back before glancing down at Adora’s message which was shining up at her expectingly. Her mother wasn’t going to be home for another few hours so she could hopefully get Adora in and out before that would become a problem.

_Fine. _

**What? **

_You can come over but don’t expect to have fun, you’ll be working the whole time_

**Great! **

Adora’s message was followed by a line of disgustingly happy and friendly emojis. It struck Glimmer as frankly repulsing.

She swallowed the taste a bile in her mouth and sent her address; there was no way this was going to go well. What she hated the most about it was how _normal_ this would seem to anyone else: just a friend going over to her science partner’s house to work together. Except they weren’t friends and Glimmer wished they weren’t partners. She didn’t want Adora to come over, it made they seem far too relaxed and grossly platonic. It reminded her of something she and Bow would do; after all, Bow was the only one who ever came over. Glimmer winced at the thought of him, still feeling betrayed by her best friend.

**Oh wow we actually live pretty close I’ll be over in about ten minutes!**

Glimmer rolled her eyes; _How wonderful. _

That gave her ten minutes, but ten minutes to do what? She got the sudden urge to be very busy; as if she needed to prove to Adora that she had actually been productive.

“That’s stupid- pull yourself together,” Glimmer muttered to herself.

The self-imposed demand did nothing to stop the boiling feeling in the pit of her stomach. She was grateful for the fact she hadn’t eaten dinner yet because if she had, it would’ve been attempting to climb up her throat.

The comfortable chaos surrounding her was suddenly becoming very overwhelming and nothing resembling comfortable.

She curled her knees up to her chest and hid her head between them, squeezing her eyes shut and hoping she could block it all out. She was out of breath and and it almost made her laugh. _How do you get out breath just sitting here? _

She let out a breathy giggle; having a nervous breakdown right now wouldn’t help anything. Besides, what would dear, perfect Adora think?

Glimmer took a deep breath and began organizing the supplies into separate piles so she could simply point out what she wanted Adora to do. She wanted to keep things as simple as possible; her goal was the same as the past few days: interact as little as she could. She wanted to pretend that Adora wasn’t her partner, that she wasn’t trying to get her to join her legion, wasn’t coming to her house and acting like a friend.

She shuffled around her room, muttering to herself and trying to sort through the mess she had made. The chaos seemed so natural to her, it almost felt strange to be cleaning it up this way. This was her house, her world; why should she have to clean it up for anyone?

Glimmer paused and blinked her eyes at the pile of laundry in her arms; nobody was _making_ her clean.

She sighed as she threw the laundry into the hamper and made eye contact with her reflection in the mirror, “You haven’t cleaned in three months; you know you’re only doing this because you’re worried about Adora will say, you know that, right?”

The reflection stared blankly back at her.

Glimmer scoffed and threw her head back, her thoughts butting up against each other inside of her mind. One side muttered about how it was the logical thing to do while the other took the low route of calling her a loser. Both had good points.

She didn’t have a time to decide which to stand with, however, as the buzzer by her door rang, its sharp sound making her jump and the hair on her arms and the back of her neck stand up straight. _Well, here we go I guess. _

Her head seemed to float as she made her way to the door, as if those weren’t her legs making their way forward; as if someone else was in control of her body.

Glimmer opened the door to Adora who was beaming like the sun shone out of her smile- or maybe her ass.

“Hey!”

“Hi?” Glimmer actually wasn’t sure what to do next; usually Bow just tackled her without asking if he could come in, “So, uh, we have work to do.”

“Sounds great- I’m ready to get started!” Adora smiled again and then stared at Glimmer who stared back.

It seemed like two minutes before realization hit Glimmer upside the head like a baseball bat and she awkwardly shuffled to the side to let Adora through the door, “Um, you should probably come inside.”

“I mean, yeah, unless you want me to stand outside the whole night,” Adora laughed.

Her laugh sounded like little bells ringing and Glimmer wanted to gag.

Adora took a couple hesitant steps inside and looked around the room with her big blue eyes that seemed wider than usual. Glimmer had been trying to use the time to figure out what next socially acceptable step would be, but she was suddenly very aware where those big blue eyes were staring: the Chinese takeout containers still sitting on the counter from the night before, the embarrassing amount of her art spread across the walls, and, worst of all, her latest report card strewn far too casually and far too near to where Adora could see it.

Glimmer snatched the report away as quickly as she noticed it, hoping Adora wouldn’t have an opportunity to see it, but it probably just made it that more obvious.

“Did you make all of these?” Adora’s bright eyes flicked from one piece of work on the walls to another and Glimmer felt her face go red.

“Oh, yeah, unfortunately.”

Adora turned to her grinning with far too much excitement, “What do you mean ‘unfortunately’?! They’re amazing, Glimmer, _amazing_!”

The girl reach forward and placed her hands on each of Glimmer’s shoulder’s, shaking her gently. It was all so intense: Adora’s grip on her shoulder’s, the colour of her eyes, the expression on her face that Glimmer didn’t know how to describe as anything other than starstruck. Glimmer was uncomfortable; she never signed up for any of this. Far too intense, far too familiar, as if she and Adora were something more than partners- and they were hardly even that and certainly not by choice. She hadn’t wanted to even talk or sit next to Adora and it made Glimmer’s head swim to find herself standing across from the Image of Perfection herself and, more importantly, that Ms Perfect was in her living room, shaking her and trying to compliment her on her art. It was far too _weird_ for Glimmer.

She pushed back suddenly as if she had snapped out of a curse- not too harsh, but hard a enough make Adora blink as she stumbled back. Everything suddenly got very quite and Glimmer could feel the blood rushing to her face; she was acting like an idiot.

“I, I guess I- I’m sorry that was weird,” Glimmer heard the words she should have been saying coming out of Adora’s mouth instead; it was strange and surreal in a way. Not that she was going to admit the fact that she was the one who had made the situation awkward by overreacting. If only Adora could stop being so perfect, so much better than her at everything, maybe then Glimmer could think straight. Even now, Adora was doing a better job of apologizing and just acting like a normal person.

Glimmer shrugged, “We should get to work.”

Adora rolled her lips between her teeth, like she was trying to decide whether or not to say something and Glimmer prayed she would settle on maintaining the awkward silence instead of just making it worse.

After a moment (which of course felt longer in Glimmer’s mind), Adora nodded and it seemed like the gesture was more for herself, a reassurance of the decision she had made, and less for Glimmer to understand what was going on. The blond looked sad; it made Glimmer wonder if Adora didn’t like the conclusion she had come to and why.

Adora nodded again, this time more certainly, and offered Glimmer a small smile that held the same odd sadness that Glimmer couldn’t understand, “Yeah you’re right. That’s the whole reason I came over, right?”

Glimmer responded to the awkward laugh Adora let out with a tight-lipped grimace. She had never seen Adora this uncomfortable- shifting on her feet, running her hands through her hair in a manner that seemed almost compulsory, chewing on her bottom lip; Glimmer couldn’t help but wonder if the girl felt as out of place as she looked, if maybe she expected more of Glimmer’s house or was uncomfortable in a place so messy. Was she judging the cheap furniture and worn down carpet; so used to a spoiled life that she felt threatened by how Glimmer lived? It made something hot and volatile boil in the bottom of Glimmer’s stomach- a mixture of anger and shame that threw themselves at each other like a chemical reaction.

Glimmer rolled her eyes and stomped past Adora, her steps punchy and short, “Yeah, come on, let’s go.”

Adora followed the demand, trailing like a sad puppy after Glimmer as she stomped down the hall.

Glimmer swung the door to her room open and threw an arm inwards, indicating the direction Adora should walk before stalking in herself.

Adora’s gaze wandered about, stalling on the art work far too long for Glimmer’s comfort before jumping from pile to chaotic pile of materials on the floor with glazed over eyes.

She turned her stare toward Glimmer, a smile once again beginning to bubble on her lips, “So… what are we doing? Also, uh, what is all this stuff?”

Glimmer raised her arm to point at a pile, moving it to another as she spoke, “Clay, paint, wire modeling stuff. You’re going to be working with the clay to make it into little balls to represent the protons on the model.”

Adora nodded and Glimmer began to think she was maybe she was being bit just a little too commanding, “I mean, if that’s ok with you?”

Then she remembered what a mess this entire project was; she didn’t care what Adora thought or felt, she just wanted the girl to get of her house and her life as soon as possible.

“Oh yeah, that’s totally fine!” Adora beamed a smile at Glimmer as if she found no greater joy in life than rolling clay into atom models. God, how could she act like that and still convince people she wasn’t a complete fake?

Glimmer was losing count of how any times she had already rolled her eyes that night but let herself do it once again before brushing past Adora to begin working.

Adora followed suit, sitting cross-legged a few feet away from Glimmer so she could just see her in the corner of her eye; the rough shape of Adora taking up space in her peripheral vision and reminding her how _wrong_ everything was in this situation. This was Glimmer’s world, _her_ place of comfort- _her_ room, _her_ art- and Adora _dared_ to turn that all upside down, just insert herself in it, claim it and take space in it? _T__ake it from her_? Glimmer fumed, glaring daggers at the carpet in front of her and clenching the paint brush in her hand.

She focused on the swirls of paint on the clay she was holding, staring at it with much more hate than it deserved. Glimmer focused on the colours and reflections of light she was creating in her hand but the hint of Adora was still there in the back of her mind and she could feel the heat rising to her face and the sensation of barbed wire wrapping around her throat. She took a breath through her nose, trying to steady herself; the last thing she wanted was to have another breakdown in front of Adora, if only to spare herself from the fake sympathy.

Glimmer glanced over at the other girl who was dutifully rolling the clay into little spheres like Glimmer had instructed, humming softly to herself. She was nodding her head from side to side, just as Glimmer did when she was alone. It made her realize just how quite the room was, especially in comparison to the music Glimmer usually had blaring, and once more she felt stingingly out of place in what was supposed to be her domain.

Adora must have felt Glimmer’s stare in her direction because she glanced up, making eye contact and offering a grin. She held up a round lump of clay between her thumb and slender index finger. Her usually immaculate fingernails had gathered a layer of soft clay beneath them; she’d somehow managed to get a tan smear of it across her face as well. _How the hell did she do that? We’ve only been here 5 minutes. _

The image was comical- Adora somehow covered in clay and her overly enthusiastic smile beaming with pride over the more-than-slightly-lopsided ball in her hand. Maybe Adora could be a mess too, a mess like the rest of us, a mess like Glimmer. Glimmer giggled and those bright blue eyes crinkled back in response.

Something inside of Glimmer recoiled; it’s not like any of this was real. Adora had probably carefully smudged that stupid clay on herself just so Glimmer would think they could ever be anything like each other.

“Is this ok?” Adora snapped Glimmer back to the present with her question. She was still wearing that same goofy smile.

Glimmer shrugged; there was a part of her that wanted to tell Adora it was shit and that she would have to start completely over just so that she could feel what it would be like to have the roles reversed- the mess up better at something than the perfectionist.

She nearly opened her mouth when a logical thought popped into her head, reminding her that telling Adora to start over would just increase the amount of time she would be around Glimmer.

Glimmer sighed and pointed at the pile of unpainted clay balls she had made earlier, “Use those as a reference. You have the the size pretty close, but try to make them rounder.”

Adora nodded and set back to work like a studious pupil, hunched over the small object she was modeling. Her blond hair was still up in its customary ponytail but it was frizzy after a long day and thick, golden strands were falling out along the edges. They created a sheer curtain between Adora’s face (and concentrated hands as she was holding the clay only an inch or two away from her nose) and the rest of the world. Glimmer could just barely see through it to Adora, her eyes piercing with focus and her tongue sticking out from between her lips like a cartoon character as she worked. She kept taking breaks every few seconds to brush the hanging locks out of her face, effectively creating a layer clay on the fringe of her hair as she used her messy fingers to push it back. _That’s gonna be crusty in the morning. _

It was a strange situation for Glimmer, seeing Adora so… She couldn’t settle on word- Concentrated? Normal? Natural? She settled for _uncomposed_. She didn’t even know if that was an actual word or not, but it seemed the most fitting. It almost made Glimmer uncomfortable; Adora wasn’t supposed to look so _real_\- that’s not the role she was supposed to play.

After a minute more, Adora straightened up and held the clay up once more and Glimmer realized that she had watched Adora’s entire process. The lump of clay was far rounder now and it had only taken her approximately three minutes based on Glimmer’s count.

“How about now?”

Glimmer gave a nod, “Yeah, pretty good. Now we just need make uhhh,” she stopped for a moment to count how many ‘protons’ were already completed, “About 60 more.”

Adora groaned dramatically and flopped backwards onto the carpeted floor and lay there for a second with her eyes closed and arms thrown above her head before glancing over at Glimmer, “What time is it anyways?”

Glimmer pulled her phone out of her back pocket to check the time but was distracted by a text from her mom:

** _Hey honey. My coworker called off so I’ll be staying late tonight. Probably won’t be in until 2 this morning. Sorry ❤️❤️ _ **

Glimmer sighed, apparently loudly as Adora turned her head again in Glimmer’s direction, “Something wrong?”

“My mom says she won’t be back until two,” she grimaced, “So, knowing her, she’ll probably be home until five.”

Adora gave a bland frown, like she didn’t know how to respond, “Oh. Sorry about that.”

Glimmer shrugged, “It’s fine, it means we can stay up later to finish this anyways. Speaking of which, how long can you stay tonight?”

“I can stay all night,” Adora seemed far too casual, twirling her pulled up hair between her fingers now that she was sitting up again, “My parents think I’m staying with Cat so yeah, basically I’m free the whole night.”

The thought of Adora spending the night at her house made her shift from side to side, her palms sweating. Having someone sleep over was not something Glimmer did regularly, not even Bow had spent the night more than once or twice. Again, it felt as if Glimmer was being forced to cross lines that separated peers from something much more familiar.

She creased her eyebrows, her thoughts suddenly diverted, “Wait why did you tell them that you were at Cat’s and not here?”

_Is she ashamed of me, that she would have to work with someone as _lowly_ as me? _

Adora looked down, blushing and obviously embarrassed. _Yup that settles it- she didn’t want to tell them that she was having to work with me, that I was going to ruin her perfect, straight-A-on-everything record. _

“Oh, uh, my parents are pretty strict so they don’t like me going to people’s houses that they don’t know. Sometimes it’s just easier to lie, you know?”

Glimmer assumed that in itself was a lie but she was tired and they had a lot of work left to do, so she dropped the subject.

Her stomach grumbled and it made Glimmer remember Adora’s question. She looked down at her phone for the second time, “It’s around six by the way- you asked a minute or two ago.”

She paused and turned her head to look at Adora who had begun to roll clay between the palms of her hands again. Well if she was going to be staying a while…

“Hey you,” Glimmer waved her phone at Adora once she had looked up again, “Wanna order some Chinese food?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know y’all are probably tired of hearing me say this but I apologize for any spelling or grammar mistakes!   
Love you all (especially if you leave a kudo or tell me what you thinkkkkkk) 🖤✨


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Glimmer gets a crush

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pre-relationship fluff? Oo we got that honey.

By the time the GrubHub guy had arrived around 30 minutes later, Adora had gained 2 more clay smears and made 7 more proton models. Her hair had been transferred into a messy bun that made her look like some sort of Instagram model. It had of course made Glimmer scoff to see her pulling the ultimate “white girl” move. It wasn’t helped by the fact that she managed the causal, scruffy artist look much better than Glimmer ever did, even though that’s exactly the style she attempted on the daily.

The door bell rang, making Glimmer flinch once again, her hand jerking along with the paint she was holding. She let out a stream of profanity at the smudge she had made.

Adora looked up with gentle concern in her eyes that tempted Glimmer to throw the paint brush at her face, “Is everything all right?”

Glimmer stood up grumbling, “It doesn’t matter. I’ll get the food- back in a minute.”

She could feel Adora’s gaze following her as she walked out of the room and it made her face burn red; what was she looking, was there something on her back? Why couldn’t she just leave her alone? Glimmer couldn’t wait for this project to be over but it seemed determine to drag her through hell before it could be complete.

Glimmer used her signature jerk to open the door, grabbed the food and shoved some crumbled cash into the deliverer’s hands after a few quick words and a grimaced smile.

When Glimmer walked back to her room she wondered if Adora looked any different when she was alone, if no one was around to witness her mask of sweetness.

Glimmer silently creaked the door open and peaked in, a part of her expecting to see Adora having transformed into some kind of green alien. Instead, Adora was sitting just as she had been minutes before when Glimmer had been in the room- hunched over the clay in her hands, her hair an annoyingly cute mess piled on the top of her head, swaying gently from side to side in time with the song she was singing. _Oh._That was different.

Adora was singing fully now, Hozier lyrics streaming out of her mouth in strong, sweet veins of sound that rippled through the air. It was disgusting how perfect her voice was- just another thing that she was better at than Glimmer- but it was somehow hypnotizing despite Glimmer’s revulsion. It was like watching a siren: surrounded by ship wrecks, seeing the flesh rot off her body but still being drawn forward. It was like a string had been tied around Glimmer’s heart, pulling her forward towards those sweet words that hung in the air like a toxic gas, wishing those words were directed at her.

_“When my time comes around_

_Lay me gently in the cold dark earth_

_No grave can hold my body down_

_I’ll crawl home to her”_

It was like- _oh no._ Glimmer knew exactly what this was starting to feel like.

Adora turned her head to notice Glimmer who shook her head, hoping she could dislodge the thought. She walked in as if she hadn’t been standing in the doorway for a minute and a half and sat down, thrusting a steaming bucket kung pow chicken at Adora.

Adora took the box with a grateful smile and unflapped the lid, taking a deep breath through her nose of the warm scent radiating off of the contents.

She looked ready to dig in with her bare hands before giving Glimmer an awkward glance, “Uhh do you have any forks?”

Glimmer looked up from where she was shoving Chow Mein in her mouth with the chopsticks she had found in the bag. She reached in and found another pair, holding them in front of her, “Got ‘opsticks.”

The blond gave what could be described as a wince, “Oh, I’m not very good at those, are you sure it didn’t come with any forks?”

It took only a minute of scrounging around in the white and red bag for Glimmer to find nothing more than a handful of fortune cookies. She held them up, “I mean, you could use these and scoop it up.”

Adora stared at Glimmer’s deadpan face and managed to hold one herself before collapsing into laughter.

She threw hear head back, her hand splayed across her chest and tears leaking out of the edges of her eyes.

Glimmer didn’t think it was that funny but she could feel a smirk growing on her own lips, “Are you ok?”

Adora took a moment to gasp for breath, “I’m sorry, I’m- I’m just imagining trying to scoop it up and, and like the cookie just crumbles into it.”

Glimmer couldn’t help but giggle at the mental image as Adora dissolved into a shaking mess once more, even snorting a few times.

She took another look at Adora, crumbled over herself and laughing so hard her face was so red it matched the writing on the To-Go bag. Maybe it was how tired and stressed and hungry she was but but something cracked in her and she collapsed forward cackling too.

Adora bowed her head up long enough for her panting breath to stabilize, “Or like, you’re picking up some noodles-“

“-and they just slide right off!” Glimmer finished the sentence as they both fell to the floor, grasping at their sides.

After a moment Glimmer took a a sharp inhale through her nose and straightened up; Adora wasn’t a friend so she might as well stop pretending like this wasn’t all some temporary show being put on. Glimmer threw a wrapped pair of chopsticks at Adora who was still doubled up on the floor, “Come on, dork, we have a lot of work to do.”

Adora followed suit, sitting up and peeling the paper from the utensils, “All right, all right, pass my food back over then.”

Glimmer did so and watched in amusement for a few moments as the other girl creased her eyebrows at the chopsticks.

“Aren’t they supposed to be separate?”

“You have to snap them apart,” Glimmer smirked, but it was almost kindly and she didn’t like that. She began internally scolding her face and reminding it that that she didn’t like Adora, that she was a snake and just saw Glimmer as a tool.

Her face got the message and fell silently, refusing to look at Adora as she continued to struggle with comical cuteness. It was obvious she was trying to play the “helpless and adorable” role.

Quietness filled the room and it should have been comforting but it just made Glimmer aware of how awkward the situation was- they were acting like friends, but they weren’t, but maybe Adora thought they were?

Despite the queasiness building up inside of Glimmer, she continued to shove food into her mouth, using it as a distraction. Besides, Adora couldn’t expect her talk if her mouth was full of Chow Mein. Glimmer huffed into her food, looking into the greasy noodles as if asking them _What?! What do you want me to do?_

Once again her body acted without her permission, glancing up at Adora who had given up on using the chopsticks correctly and was instead simply stabbing the pieces of chicken and vegetables within her container.

Glimmer let out a reactionary snort that she immediately wished she could take back when Adora matched her gaze and gave a sheepish smile. Glimmer broke off the eye contact and stared back down at her noodles who offered no consultation. _Maybe I should at least say something- but maybe it’s been too long to say anything now. I wish these noodles would stop looking at me that way. Wow. I really am going crazy. _

She stabbed a chunk of carrot out of frustration. _That’ll show them damn noodles. _

“I thought you weren’t supposed to use them that way,” she could hear the grin on Adora’s lips. What an aggravating brat; some day Glimmer was gonna wipe that smirk off her lips.

For now, Glimmer just groaned and threw her head before reaching out to correct Adora’s hands with enthusiasm that surprised both of them.

Her hands were so different from Adora’s- smaller and chubbier and tanner and splattered with blues and purples and pinks. Even with the clay, Adora’s hands looked like they belonged to a doll; pale and slender and some how delicate as they rested in Glimmer’s hold even though they only sat there for a moment.

Adora had the utensils held upright in a clenched fist and Glimmer could see her own hands shaking as she unwrapped Adora’s grip, taking the chopsticks from her. This was all too much for her, all too friendly.

“Ok so, basically,” she took a deep breath, trying to steady herself as inconspicuously as she could. She handed one of the chopsticks back and placed the other one on a napkin in front of Adora. Glimmer held up one of her’s to demonstrate, “You know how to hold a pencil right? Basically just do that with one of them and slip the other one next to it so you can use them kinda like scissors.”

Adora completed the first step with no problem, looking at Glimmer once or twice- maybe for reference or approval; who knew? Glimmer certainly didn’t. It was the second step where Adora utterly failed, both chopsticks falling to the ground followed by a small “oops” from the girl.

She picked them up again and, again, dropped them both.

Glimmer scowled before making up her mind and reaching out towards Adora once again, offering one of the fallen chopsticks, “Here like a pencil; you’ve got this part down.”

“Yeah, ‘cause I’m a nerd,” Adora was smirking and Glimmer let herself mirror the expression; at least it proved that Adora had some idea of self deprecating humor.

One of Glimmer’s hands was cradling Adora’s and even though her slender fingers were longer than Glimmer’s, her hand seemed small in hers, not fragile, just graceful. She placed the second chopstick between Adora’s middle and index finger, Glimmer still supporting the hand in front of her for a moment too long.

Glimmer drew back as if she had just took a dish out of the oven but hadn’t realized how hot it was until her palms were burned red with splotches. She turned away from Adora who gave a childish giggle at the chopsticks resting in her fingers. While Adora seemed perfectly content to click the utensils together, Glimmer felt like the Chow Mein she had eaten so desperately only minutes before had now transformed into eels and were writhing within her body.

And Adora was _right_ there- everything Glimmer had ever resented, everything Glimmer had ever wanted to be. But Adora… was giggling and clicking away into her takeout box with the wonder of an infant; how could this be the girl everyone loved so much? That’s not the type of person that makes it to the top.

Worst of all, it scared Glimmer. If for one random moment she assumed this is actually who Adora is and that she’s not just faking it, assuming that all the purity she shows and smiles she flashes at school are real, that means she became popular simply for who she was. It meant that Glimmer _hadn’t_ made it there not because she was a genuine person, but because people simply didn’t like her.

Glimmer squeezed her eyes shut; the colours of the room she usually loved were far too loud, screaming into her mind; Adora’s red shirt loudest of all. She could feel the sweat on her palms as she clenched her fists.

“Are you ok?” Adora’s voice was much closer than it was supposed to be. _Oh boy here comes my favorite: sickly sweet fake sympathy!_

When Glimmer turned her head, Adora was crouched at Glimmer’s side, looking at her with concern playing across the glass of those big blue eyes. Her hand was reaching out hesitantly, only a breath’s width from touching Glimmer’s arm. She managed to choke the suffocating sensation out of her throat long enough to growl in Adora’s direction.

“I’m absolutely peachy,” In all honesty, Glimmer’s head was screaming as if it were filled with sirens.

She shot up, not caring that her body knocked Adora’s still out-stretched hand as she did so, “I need to go to the bathroom.”

Despite stalking out of the room with as much purpose as she could muster, she didn’t go far. Glimmer let the tension fall from her body as she slumped against the wooden door, like a puppet whose master had let go of the strings.

Glimmer had planned on catching her breath, centering herself, whatever you want to call “getting back to normal”, and then deciding where to go with the situation from there- which would have been a fine plan if Adora hadn’t decided to snoop on Glimmer, peaking her head around the corner of the door.

Unfortunately, this was the same door Glimmer had been currently slumped against and when the door was removed, Adora had unwittingly placed herself in its position. Both girls went flying backwards, squawking in surprise as Adora failed to be as sturdy as the door.

“What are you doing?!” Glimmer could feel the tears prickling at the sides of her eyes.

Adora opened her mouth like she didn’t know how to respond or wasn’t expecting Glimmer’s anger or maybe both. The closest thing she got to a response was a deep blush spreading across Adora’s face as her eyes made a pattern of glancing at what little space was between their bodies and searching for… something in Glimmer’s face.

It was at this point that Glimmer realized how tangled up they were; she had already shifted to face Adora without thinking but that meant the majority of her weight was being held by Adora’s torso as it rose and fell against Glimmer’s stomach with Adora’s heavy breathing. The rest of Glimmer’s weight was being supported by her own arm which was placed only an inch or so left of Adora’s side and below Adora’s upper arm.

Glimmer’s attention was drawn back to Adora’s face as the girl below her tried to stutter out an explanation, “Look I, I don’t know- I felt like. Look, I’m sorry, ok? I’m sorry about a lot of things.”

Glimmer managed to stand up with minimal contact or further tangling. She snorted, “Aren’t we all?”

“No, I mean,” Adora was still on the ground but she had sat up now, her legs casually stretched out in a V with Glimmer standing between them, “I think I upset you and I’m sorry for that. And whenever I try to check on you or try to make things better, it just gets worse and worse,” She looked up at Glimmer with those big blue eyes that were far shinier than usual. Her voice was much weaker when she spoke, hardly understandable, “I seem to do that a lot. And I’m sorry.”

Glimmer sighed through her nose, shaking her head as she extended her hand down to Adora, “Come on, get off the ground. You know, I can never know if you actually mean anything you say.”

Adora excepted the hand and began to haul herself up when she suddenly froze, her eyebrows creased together, “What?”

Glimmer snorted, “Well don’t just sit here with you ass half way in the air.”

“Why wouldn’t I mean what I say?” Adora stood all the way up but the lines of confusion remained deeply etched on her face.

A shrug came from Glimmer as if she hadn’t spent the past few days wrestling and juggling with this concept almost religiously, “I just assumed that to be popular you had to be fake and backstabbing and play different roles to get people to like you.”

“You really thought that about me? No wondered you didn’t like or trust me,” Adora’s face was clouded over by hurt and sadness but, after a moment, shifted to a small and timid smile that was present nonetheless, “What made you change your mind?”

Glimmer gave a smirk, “First of all, who said anything about liking you? And secondly… I realized that you were so much of an idiot nobody could play that role for any length of time and it therefore had to be genuine.”

Adora nodded seriously for a moment before throwing her head back laughing, “That’s valid.”

They shared a small smile, there in the doorway to Glimmer’s room, and for once Glimmer let herself believe it was real.

But then the air seemed to grow very stale between them as Adora began to bounce nervously shifting her weight from one foot to the other and the insect-like sensation of uncertainty crawled up Glimmer’s spine.

She clapped her hands in front of her with all coolness of a middle aged dad who said stuff like _Let’s go, Team!_ but without any of the misplaced confidence, “Um do you think we should get back to work?”

Adora seemed to be relieved by that idea and Glimmer understood that- the want to return to familiarity after they had just ventured where they had never been before... only to scurry away after only sticking their toes in. But that was enough; that was all Glimmer needed for a lifetime, thank you very much.

“Yeah I still have roughly 50 protons to go, right?” Adora’s joke brought Glimmer from whatever trench she had settled into in her mind.

“Oh hmm yeah,” she hummed in response. Nothing like a noncommittal answer to show you’re really present in a conversation.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, both working diligently at their respective “stations,” which now seemed oddly far away compared to how close they had been tangled up on the floor; feeling the lack of the warmth from Adora’s body that had become far too familiar, far too quickly and then been stolen away with similar speed. Glimmer didn’t know what to say or do. How could she? Only minutes ago the thought of the girl made her nauseous and now they were… friends? Maybe. Probably not. Glimmer had no evidence that even if Adora was being truthful, this whole relationship that was struggling to grow like a plant deprived of sun wouldn’t completely wither away as soon the project was over. It wasn’t like Adora was lacking friends the way Glimmer was; she had lots of them, she had Cat. _God, Cat._There was no way she was going to let her best friend hang out with someone with as “uncool” as Glimmer.

“Hey can I ask something that might be a little personal?” Adora’s voice breaking the silence forced Glimmer to dig herself out of her thoughts once more.

“What?” The question registered before Adora had the chance to repeat herself, “I guess so…”

Adora didnt look up from the clay in her hands as she spoke and Glimmer wondered if it was easier to look at than her face or Adora was just trying to be a good student and get the work done, “What’s your mom’s job? She seems to work really long shifts. I understand if you don’t want to answer or something though!”

“Oh, no it’s cool. She’s an ER nurse. I’m actually kinda proud.”

Adora nodded, “Yeah that’s really cool.”

The silence settled in again but this time it felt more natural, comfortable. Like a cold room that had been empty all night but started to warm up as people filled it.

“Do you miss her? Like, do you get to see her a lot with those long hours?”

Glimmer just shrugged; they weren’t going there, not yet and if this went down the way Glimmer was predicting, probably never.

“Ok my turn,” Glimmer decided to speak after a few moments of quiet concentration, “Why do you care so much about getting an A on this project? You can afford to even get a D on it and still pass the class with an A, so why does it matter so much?”

All of the usual light seemed to flicker out out of Adora’s face and her hands stopped their work and started aimlessly fiddling with the clay instead.

Glimmer immediately wished she could take back the question, “You, uh, you don’t need to answer either.”

“I just like getting good grades,” Adora shrugged and resumed her work but Glimmer was too familiar the tension in her face and the stiffness of her fingers to mistake the casualness for anything more than an armor.

She shook her head, the obnoxiously curious and somewhat disrespectful portion of her brain breaking past all safeguards to push the topic, “Nah it’s more than that.”

Glimmer put down the clay and paint brush in front of her and shifted so she was facing Adora, “Come on tell me, spill the tea.”

Adora managed a smile, but it was still weak, “Uh, I was adopted? And I’ve always felt like I need to prove they chose the right kid? I’m sorry, I’m not sure if that makes sense.”

Regret was filling Glimmer’s body as tears glistened in Adora’s. _Shit shit shit. _Why did she always have to ask about the worst things? This was why no one liked her, “Oh god, I’m really sorry I asked and then pushed it and I should have just let it go. Oh shit I’m sorry.”

“It’s ok, Glimmer.”

“Not it’s not! I shouldn’t have kept pushing it when you obviously didn’t want to talk about it!” Glimmer was rushing her words out, hoping they could erase what she had said before but knowing they couldn’t.

Adora let out a watery laugh, “It’s ok, it’s not you’re fault that I have perfectionist ideals that I can never achieve because of abandonment issues and separation anxiety.”

Glimmer’s eyes widened; what the hell was she supposed to say to that?? She felt like she should at least try to respond, “Oh, uh-“

“I’m joking, Glimmer!” Adora’s face wet enough for her loose hair to plaster itself to her cheeks but she was grinning.

“Hug?” Glimmer held her arms out in front of her. They were stiff and shaking slightly; this was not comfortable territory to Glimmer but neither was any of this project and, besides, she felt like she owed Adora for bringing up a topic that was obviously a sore spot.

Adora raised an eyebrow, “Really?”

Glimmer nodded, “Yeah bring it in, dork. That’s why I’ve got my arms hanging out in front of me like an idiot.”

Adora beamed a full smile and moved so she could shuffle forward on her knees to close the foot of empty space between them. She wrapped her arms around Glimmer’s neck, allowing Glimmer to wrap her arms around her torso. Adora smelled nice as she buried her face into Glimmer’s shoulder. It reminded Glimmer of a forest- earthy from the clay and sweet from some sort of shampoo or perfume. The scent was making her lightheaded. Or maybe it was the blood rushing to her head, her heart pounding like a scared rabbit trapped in her rib cage, so quickly she was worried Adora could feel it as she pressed herself into Glimmer.

Time seemed to slow down, were they there for a second, a few minutes, the whole night? Glimmer couldn’t tell. When Adora finally gave Glimmer a last squeeze and drew away, Glimmer was surprised she didn’t fall forward. She was certainly dizzy enough to faint.

Adora gave a small smile and Glimmer returned it; trying to contain her own disbelief at how much had changed in just the past 2 hours. However this stupid project turned out, getting to the finish line was certainly a roller coaster.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...I’m not going to apologize for my spelling because I think you get it by now  
Kudos and comments bring joy to my dusty, angsty soul  
Love youuuuu 🖤✨


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is just... purely indulgent fluff. But hey, why the hell not?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Brought to you by Hozier”

3 protons later, when Adora’s face had returned to it’s usual colour and was no longer wet with tears, Glimmer was still no less mystified about what was going on or what her situation with Adora was; were they friends, were they acquaintances- _what even are acquaintances??_\- had she actually hugged Adora? Why would she do that? Well she knew why, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to admit it. One of her brain cells had resumed its habit of calling her a loser. Once again, she felt that it was making a fair point.

Adora seemed oblivious as she continued to work away on the clay Glimmer had assigned her to, her back bent and stray pieces of hair creating a divide once more between her and the rest of the world, between her and Glimmer.

The silence had become awkward again, at least on Glimmer’s side. The oxygen in the room felt stuffy and hard to breathe like the air in a closed car in the summer that heats up and makes the whole car into a moving oven; it felt as if it were being thickened by the tension Glimmer felt. She could readily assume though that she was the only one feeling this awkwardness and, if it were real, she was probably the one creating it.

If only she could think of something to say, something to do, something to break up the space between them, something to place how causal she was supposed to act now, something-

“Hey, what are you painting?” Adora asked. Bright, friendly, opening up the room for conversation, casual but nothing too personal or anything that would just make matters more awkward. _Damn how did she get so good at this whole ‘talking’ thing? Is there a class I should take? _

Glimmer stopped the rambling in her mind for a moment to answer, “I’m trying to make them look like a chunk of Bismuth.”

Glimmer held up one the finished pieces that was nearly dry at this point and hoped Adora wouldn’t make a big deal of it the way she had about all of her other art. Of course, things could never go the way Glimmer wanted them to and Adora’s jaw was dropping before she had the time to finish the thought.

“Glimmer!!”

“…yes?”

“That’s so cool- oh my god- how do you even? Holy shit!!”

Glimmer could feel her face going red; it was like she hated any type criticism but didn’t know how to handle compliments. She knew it was illogical but it didn’t stop her from doing it which is why her brain chose this moment to remind her what a loser she was. _Yeah, yeah I know. Now shut up and help me talk to the pretty girl. _

Did she just call Adora pretty? On the one hand that could be a very, very bad sign pointing to _something_ that Glimmer was attempting to refuse as even a possibility but on the other hand, it was just the truthful reality. Glimmer had always known that Adora was pretty, far prettier than she ever considered herself- that’s for sure.

Glimmer shook herself out of her self contemplation/pity party to see Adora leaning towards her and asking if she could see one closer. Nodding, Glimmer placing the one in her hand into Adora’s cupped and waiting palm. She gave a habitual warning of watching out for wet paint but wasn’t focusing on her own words. Instead, she was thinking about how this was the first time they had touched since _the hug_. That shouldn’t have mattered as much as it did.

Adora held the little round of clay between two fingers as if it were a fragile, ancient artifact. She looked at it with the same child-like awe that she had directed at the chopsticks earlier. Glimmer was slightly insulted by the fact that her work seemed to hold the same amount of amazing qualities as some mass produced wooden sticks. Mostly though, she was just watching the look of wonder that filled Adora’s face, the girl’s mouth slightly agape and her eyes absolutely locked on the small ball that she wouldn’t stop turning from side to side to see the light reflect off of it. Glimmer scolded herself for it, but couldn’t stop soaking in the admiration in Adora’s expression. Why should she care so much about what Adora’s opinion of her skills? She shouldn’t and that was the final word on that. _Yeah but she’s popular and if she respects me, then maybe other people will too. _Ha! So she could justify it! 

…And of course she hated how happy that made her.

Adora cleared her throat, apparently realizing how childish she looked; Glimmer tried not to look or feel so disappointed as she actually was, “How did you do that?”

“Hmm?” Glimmer raised her eyebrows hoping to express how little she understood what Adora was talking about.

“I mean the way it shines; it really looks like metal. It’s just,” she huffed like she was giving up on something, “amazing. I know I keep saying that, but it really is true!”

“Oh, uh, it’s just the paint,” Glimmer held up the bottle and waved it in the air, “Metallic paint: really handy when you want to paint something that looks like, um, metal.”

Adora smiled at that, making Glimmer glad that at least her stupidity wasn’t going to waste.

She handed back the ball of clay with slight reverence that made Glimmer squirm for reasons she couldn’t quite place.

Glimmer placed it back down among its completed siblings and Adora scooted back to her place of work. _Well I guess this conversation is over. _

It was several more minutes before Glimmer got up the courage to say something else. The silence seemed to roar in her ears at times like that, when she felt like she should say something but just didn’t know how. That was part of the reason she asked the question she did, “Hey do you mind if I turn on some music?”

Adora whipped head around to face Glimmer (and maybe to fling her messy bun- which was getting messier by the minute- out of her face), “Yeah, sure!”

Glimmer connected her phone back into her speaker- to where it had been before all of this had started with Adora’s text. Her hands were shaky again as she scrolled through her music to the _H’s_. What did she expect to get out of this? Adora’s approval, her friendship that she didn’t even know was real or if it would last? A part of her mind whispered _You_ _just want to hear her sing again_.

And thus Hozier began ringing out in her room again. This time in a man’s voice, followed by music, and layered to create harmonies. It was heart wrenching because of the authenticity; that’s why Glimmer liked it. And somehow, despite the genuine emotion that filled the music, it didn’t seem as real as Adora had managed to be when she was alone in Glimmer’s room, singing merely because she felt the need or want to.

_“My lover’s got humor _

_She’s the giggle at a funeral _

_Knows everybody’s disapproval-” _

Adora flung herself backwards with dramatic happiness, “Oh my god, I LOVE Hozier!”

“Yeah, I know,” Glimmer blurted our without thinking.

She winced at the confused glance she got in response, “I saw, er, heard you singing earlier.”

“Oh.”

The room was silent except for the music still pouring out of Glimmer’s speaker, neither knowing what to do.

“You’re really good,” Glimmer decided to speak from the heart; it was true after all. She recalled the hypnotizing quality of Adora’s voice, the jealousy she had felt. Part of that jealousy had simple roots: her mother was an amazing singer whose voice rang throughout the apartment equally sweet and heartbroken in a way that could bring the most calloused hearts to tears. It was no exaggeration to say that Glimmer, on the other hand, sounded like a pig with a sore throat. Ok maybe that was a little bit of an exaggeration, but the difference in talent was undeniable; Glimmer had always felt that she had probably disappointed her mom. And there was Adora going above and beyond Glimmer’s level in yet another area. It made perfect sense for her to be jealous. But there was that little voice in her head that reminded her of that pull she had felt, that want for the words to be describing her, jealous of whoever they were describing. Chalk it up to Adora’s great signing.

Adora gave a somewhat wary smile, “Thanks.”

Glimmer squinted, “You don’t believe me, do you? I mean it, you’re great.”

Wow, that took a lot to force out; Glimmer was one of the last to compliment someone on something they were better at than her. It wasn’t that she conceited or anything; after all, she was the first to compare herself as lesser to others- internally, that is. She just feared that admitting other’s advantage over her would lead to other’s finding out just how bad she was. Just another thing Glimmer knew to be illogical, but wouldn’t stop. _Hmm, maybe I should talk to a counselor. _

Adora’s smile was still shy but far more genuine, “Really?”

Glimmer threw a spare bit of clay lying next to her leg at the other girl, “Yes, dork. Now come on, the songs almost over and we haven’t gotten anything done.”

Adora turned back to her work with a grin on her lips. It was cute, not overplayed and blindingly enthusiastic like Adora’s smiles often struck Glimmer. And, _huh_, Glimmer had made this one.

They worked quietly for a few minutes- for a whole song, in fact. The silence was far more comfortable now that the air between them wasn’t a wasteland of uncertainty, instead filled with not only sound, but common interest.

It was at the break between two songs that Adora decided to speak once more, “Do you sing?”

“Oh,” _Hahaha_. Glimmer sure did love how god liked to toy with her emotions and make her squirm. If she ever met whatever stupid being controlled her world, she might punch it, “Uh, no, I don’t really sing.”

“Oh, ok,” Adora seemed somewhat disappointed. _Way to go, Glimmer, make everything awkward again. _

Glimmer spent the next few minutes on her favorite hobby: worrying. She wondered if maybe she should have said something different, should have lied and said that she could. But what if Adora asked her about it sometime and she was forced to break it to her that she couldn’t sing to save her life? That of course brought up the idea that this relationship, this friendship, this whatever it was, was never going to last. Glimmer considered saying something now to fix the tension she had created but then balanced that with the fact she would probably just make things worse. Talking to people is way too much work and it hardly ever results in anything good.

That’s when Adora started singing again.

Quiet and sweet at first, like she was trying to gain the confidence to get louder or was trying to measure Glimmer’s reaction. It was like liquid sugar weaving through the air and although outside Glimmer showed no response- she hardly batted an eye- inside, her heart was fluttering. _God, why isn’t this girl on _America’s Got Talent _or something like that? _

Then the chorus started and Adora’s voice grew into a river, flowing through the room with the joy and strength of someone immersed in love. It was powerful and beautiful and made Glimmer feel like she was sitting next to some ancient deity. She had heard jokes on the internet about Hozier being some sort of immortal or Celtic god but she didn’t understand it until Adora was singing his words. Of course, as a matter of principle, Glimmer refused to acknowledge it in any way.

That is until Adora placed her clay down in front of her, her voice halting as she stood and stayed there unmoving for a few seconds. Glimmer glanced upward to see Adora jerking her head in her direction like _Come on, get up! _

Glimmer set her brush on her palette and shifted to stand slowly and with hesitation, frozen somewhere between incredulity and fear, “What are you doing?”

Adora took Glimmer’s hand, pulling her the rest of the way up, “We’ve been sitting too long, come on- dance with me!”

Glimmer choked, “Sorry, _what_?”

Adora had started singing again but paused long enough to answer Glimmer, “Dance with me!”

She grabbed Glimmer’s hands and began twisting herself gently back and forth to the beat of the music, Glimmer’s arms being moved along with Adora’s body. Glimmer prayed Adora couldn’t feel how sweaty how her palms were in the grasp.

She managed a giggle, all incredulous feelings replaced by pure uncertain fear, and tried to speak above Adora’s voice, “I can’t dance!”

Adora laughed and began moving her head goofily from side to side along with her body, “Well that’s good ‘cause neither can I!”

Glimmer let Adora lead her away from the art materials into the clear(er) part of the room and didn’t understand why until Adora began shuffling her feet from side to side, taking Glimmer along with her in a swaying, twisting sort of half-dance.

The chorus had started up again and Adora had her head thrown back, letting the words ring out of her mouth. The overhead light was reflecting off the posters on Glimmer’s walls, tinging Adora’s face with violets and hot pinks. She looked- she looked like, well, she looked like an idiot.

Glimmer laughed and it was real, carrying through her room as loud as Adora’s voice.

Adora looked up, grinning widely. She made eye contact with Glimmer, keeping her head up as she switched to dramatically mouthing the words. She still sang them but now looked comically like she was some rock star from the 80’s:

_“I fall in love just a little, ol’ little bit _

_Everyday with someone new.” _

Adora wouldn’t break the gaze she held with Glimmer, the blue of her eyes sparkling. It made Glimmer’s stomach flip strangely; she didn’t know what was happening, she didn’t know where they were going as they swayed through her room- content to be lead by Adora’s voice. Or maybe it was Adora’s smile she was following. She didn’t know; she didn’t care.

Her head was light and she couldn’t exactly feel her legs. She wondered vaguely if this what it was like to be high and if this floating-without-legs feeling was the reason they called it ’high.’ She momentarily stumbled across the idea that maybe she _was_ high but abandoned it quickly to memorize the way Adora’s nose crinkled occasionally as she sang. It wasn’t like this was ever going to happen again so she might as well enjoy it, remember how it felt. Of course Bow and her messed around like this but… Bow just didn’t have eyes that sparkled like sunlight on the ocean, didn’t have a voice that rolled over you like molten gold, didn’t stop suddenly and ask you to dance and make you laugh with stupid footwork, didn’t make you feel like you could fly right out of your body.

Adora let go of one of Glimmer’s hands to twirl her around in an imperfect circle which mostly was imperfect due to the fact that Glimmer had tripped half way through. She completed the turn unsteadily, giggling as she fell lightly on Adora who caught the hand she had dropped with just enough strength to keep Glimmer from toppling them both to the ground. Glimmer still dipped forward, stopping quite close to Adora’s face; close enough to notice the specks of light grey and darker blues that floated in her eyes. Glimmer was starting to get very interested in those eyes. _God damnit. _

When the song ended, Adora lead her back to where they had been sitting before by keeping one keeping one of Glimmer’s hands wrapped loosely in her soft fingers; Glimmer was grateful for the guidance as her feet and legs were still miles away from her head.

“See, told you that would be fun,” Adora smiled at Glimmer after they had sat down.

“You didn’t say that; you said ‘Come on get up’ and then you dragged me with you.”

Adora leaned towards her with a sing-songy tone on her voice, “Yeah, but it was fun, _wasn’t_ it?”

Glimmer gave a grudging smile back, “Yeah, sure. Whatever if it’ll make you shut up.”

Adora grinned before turning back to her work. They worked for the rest of the album more or less in silence, only occasionally checking the other’s progress or asking how their work looked. Adora’s answers were always somewhere along the lines of “amazing” or “great” and it made Glimmer feel slightly guilty for her far more critical answers. Then again, Glimmer was not known as someone to soften the truth; maybe that’s why she wasn’t popular- let alone, highly so. During that time period Adora refrained from singing anymore, only humming here and there but never actually letting her voice ring out the way it had. In some ways Glimmer was glad; she couldn’t afford that type of distraction.

The final song ended and Glimmer abandoned her paints for a second to scroll through her phone, “Ok what do you want to listen to next? I’ve got Twenty One Pilots, David Bowie, Black Pink, Mozart, basically anything; what sounds good?

“Oh, uh, whatever you want.” Adora hummed without interest.

Glimmer was hurt as she had hoped her wide selection would impress Adora or at least reveal another shared interest. That was until she dared a glance at Adora whose hunched shoulders had shifted from “I’m concentrated and working hard” to “Oh my god, when did my head get so heavy?” and whose hands were moving much slower now, rolling repetitively without doing much.

“Hey are you ok?” It was only around ten; she couldn’t be tired, could she?

“Oh yeah I’m just sleepy,” Her eyes weren’t quite half-closed yet but they had certainly lost almost all of their customary shine. She tried for a smile but it seemed to take quite some effort, “I guess I’m just not a night person. Also I’ve been up since five.”

Glimmer scowled; they still had a lot work to do and she hadn’t even considered sleep as she was the type of teenage goblin who just didn’t sleep. (Well maybe she did but it didn’t qualify as much more than passing for a couple hours with the light on before waking up and continuing life as she had been before she was rudely interrupted by exhaustion).

“It’s ok, though,” she yawned, “I can keep working.”

Glimmer doubted that but the time creeping forward was starting to make her anxious and she was hoping to be finished before passing out. On the other hand, forcing Adora to keep working in this hardly-awake state was unlikely to speed up the process. _And it might make her hate you. _

She chewed the bottom of her lip, trying to weigh the options _Get this stupid project over with/Make Adora hate you. Hmmm_, “How many do have left to make?”

It took Adora a few times to count the number, further pushing Glimmer’s decision, “24.”

Her voice was bright but Glimmer could see right through the fact that it was an attempt to seem more awake. _Ha_. Not only did Glimmer use this tactic herself everyday, she had spent the majority of her interactions with Adora trying to discern when Adora was being genuine and when she was wearing a mask; she knew the girl was faking, “Go ahead and sleep- you’ve made enough extras that I can work on painting them for a while before needing more.”

Adora’s lips twitched into a frown, “Are you sure?”

“I’ll wake up when I need you,” Maybe that’ll appease her inner workaholic. Glimmer thought about what Adora had said about wanting to prove her what: worth? use? validity? to her adoptive parents. It made her wonder how hard Adora pushed herself, “Go to sleep.”

“You promise you’ll wake me up?”

“Yes, now _sleep_; you look you’re about to fall over,” _Shit I sound like my mom. _She hoped her voice held that same gentle but stern tone that seemed to work on nearly everybody that her mom used as well. _If I’m gonna sound like my mom, it better work as well as it does for her. _

Apparently she hadn’t gotten it down yet as Adora still looked unconvinced. Glimmer gave her a soft push and Adora gave in, flopping to the floor.

“M’kay, talk to ya in a few hours.”

“Uh, you don’t need to sleep there,” Glimmer hadn’t expected Adora to actually fall over with the push and she certainly hadn’t expected her to curl up and close her eyes right there on the carpet, “My bed’s right there if you wanna use it.”

Adora gave a small shrug, “Here’s ok.”

“Do you at least want a pillow?? A blanket, something-“

“_Glimmer_,” She waited for Glimmer to look over, “This is fine and I’m about to pass out so just let me sleep.”

“Ok…” Glimmer still felt like she should do something else but, sure enough, Adora was asleep within a few minutes.

The girl slept as perfectly as she lived- or at least looked like she lived- breathing in soft puffs, her hair falling over her cheeks in wisps. Her face was relaxed and free of the tension of life pressing down on her; without it, years seemed to be swept away.

Glimmer snorted to herself- _years swept away; as if the two of us aren’t 16._ But there was a quality of truth to it; without the tension of an over-strung smile or creases caused by concentration, she looked- well maybe “younger” wasn’t the right word, maybe “fitting” was better, finally looking like a 16 year old. Glimmer had never noticed how old she looked, how all her maturity and perfection came from the lines in her expression. But here Adora was just a girl; just a tired, overworking girl whose breathing matched Glimmer’s heartbeat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leave a comment or kudo if you liked it!  
Love you 🖤✨


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternatively titled: Angst Angst Fluff?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IMPORTANT: I want to give this chapter an internalized homophobia tw just because it ended up leaning that way and I really really don’t want anyone to get triggered. 
> 
> This part gets pretty angsty but I promise it gets real fluffy (there’s only one bed) and then we’re all good from here. so IF IT IS SAFE, I promise it’s worth the read 
> 
> (I’m sorry I’m being so intense; I just want everyone to be safe and healthy 🖤✨)

Glimmer worked in silence, the only sounds were the soft _rsssh _her paint brush made as she swished it over clay. It was strange; just the way you can tell someone has walked in a room despite not hearing or seeing them, Glimmer could feel Adora’s presence in the room regardless of how quiet she was. And it wasn’t only quiet as in not speaking, it was as if the volume of the entirety of Adora’s being had been turned down. Glimmer was used to Adora’s energy filling all of the room as Glimmer just attempted to hunker beneath it. Now though, Adora’s presence was small, ebbing and flowing in minuscule tides as her chest rose and fell gently. So it was like Glimmer could feel Adora in the the room, but it was _wrong_, it was too small. It reminded Glimmer of just how human Adora was.

Only that afternoon Glimmer had been convinced Adora was a snake and a liar and the last thing Glimmer wanted to be near to. Now, she seemed a lot smaller, a lot more delicate, and a lot more authentic. The last few hours had been somewhere between a miracle and a disaster, but nowhere near normal. Glimmer almost felt the need to protect Adora as she sat there in a daze in the first silence she had had since Adora’s text.

That didn’t mean Glimmer liked the opportunity to think that the quiet was giving her; in fact, she was actively attempting not to. However strong her desire to avoid thought was, though, her mind’s insistent little voice was stronger. And it was suggesting things she didn’t liked.

_You like her, don’t you? You think she’s pretty? You want to kiss her? _

The paint brush _rsssh_-ed harder against the clay. _No, no, and no. _

_Well that’s good because she would never like you back. _

An involuntary sigh escaped out of Glimmer’s nose as her eyes bore pits into her carpet. _Will you just leave me alone?? _

_Oh I thought you said you didn’t care about her? _

_I said I didn’t like her, not that I didn’t care about her. _

She risked a glance in Adora’s direction. Glimmer couldn’t deny the fact that she was beginning to care about her. If all that gentleness and sweet attitude was real, Adora was bound to get hurt or at least have one hell of a life. But then again, maybe she already did; Glimmer couldn’t help but wonder about Adora’s past and why she would have adoptive parents. Adora was a mystery wrapped in an enigma and then there was something about a question mark... Glimmer didn’t know the quote and honestly didn’t really care, but the truth held: there was a lot about this girl that Glimmer didn’t know.

As she watched, Adora shifted slightly so her hair fell forward and tangled in her eyelashes; Glimmer could practically feel her hand itching to brush it out of face. She scooted over to the sleeping form, not even thinking about her actions as she moved. Adora was directly below her now, curled but with her arms sticking out in front of her; it reminded Glimmer of a puppy. The golden strands of hair were tantalizing, seemingly crying out for Glimmer’s hand to tuck it behind the girl’s ear. It just looked so _soft_. Glimmer was, of course, most familiar with her own hair which was thick and wavy; she loved it but... Adora’s hair looked like silk and something in Glimmer wanted to become familiar with that too. Glimmer quickly reminded herself that she was _only_ doing this because messy things bugged her and she would want to fix someone’s hair whether it was soft or not. _Well in that case... _

Resolved that she was only doing this because the out of place strands were bothering her, Glimmer reached forward, her hand once again shaking. It was surreal, watching herself reach out to Adora’s face, so close she could feel the girl’s breath fluttering on her hand. But the hair was so soft, softer than Glimmer could have ever imagined and she let herself play with it- couldn’t help it- the pieces of silk trailing between her fingers, wrapped up in them. And Adora’s face- just _wow_. Glimmer had never been this close, never really let herself appreciate it- that is, until now.

She was pale (Glimmer had known that much) with a soft blush and a sprinkling of freckles dusting her cheeks and nose. Her skin wasn’t perfect- she had acne like any teen- but it looked satiny as well. Adora’s eyelashes were long but that was probably helped by the mascara rubbing off on the bags under her eyes. Once again Glimmer wondered about how tired Adora was, how hard she pushed herself.

Glimmer couldn’t tear her eyes away, soaking in Adora like she was the first human she had ever seen. Her eyes glazed over as she stared downwards, lost in the thoughts that crashed against the sides of her head like waves that thundered and broke against a storm wall in an ocean marina. It hurt; her mind on the point of bursting, overfilled with ideas that warred against each other. She was jealous of Adora’s somehow unfailing beauty, of how much people loved her, of how the sun shone in the room when she walked in while Glimmer was treated as an unwanted inconvenience. There was disgust- disgust over Adora, over her popularity; a minute part of her convinced that all of this was one huge joke being played at her expense. Disgust washed over her once again, this time directed at herself for letting her guard down, falling for the joke, falling for Adora. _God, there it is._ Because it was true- mixed in with all these feelings was admiration, appreciation- for Adora’s eyes and her smile and her attitude and the way she sang and the way made Glimmer feel like she was floating away and she wanted to find more reasons, add to the list, everyday if she could. You could call it infatuation. Again, guilt and repulse came flowing against her. She shouldn’t like Adora, _couldn’t_; it was bad enough that she had to like girls, had to ostracize herself from the rest of the school- hell maybe the rest of the _world_\- but this? Liking someone she had absolutely no chance with? She was just setting herself up for rejection and another strong dose of humiliation.

In amongst her tumbling thoughts, the fact that Adora’s hair was still wrapped through her fingers had been forgotten. Glimmer had continued to absentmindedly run the strands through her fingers, the light, silky feeling in her hand grounding in a way she didn’t exactly understand. While most of Glimmer’s mind was occupied with confusion and confrontation, a tiny part had (literally) grabbed hold of Adora and was hanging on for dear life; she had tethered herself to the girl that was causing her so much pain.

As her mind became more agitated and convoluted, all her emotions one big tangle, she became less and less aware of Adora, her hands lost their careful gentleness. At one point, her hand had been completely disconnected from her thoughts and it gave a sharp tug that caused Adora to stir, her eyes flickering open.

The blue was still mostly covered by eyelids and glazed; Adora was squinting like she couldn’t tell what was going on. She glanced up, “Glimmer?”

Glimmer’s heart swelled against her will at the sleepy murmur and she tucked the hair she had been so fond of behind Adora’s ear- taking great care this time to be gentle, “No, it’s just a dream. Go back to sleep.”

Adora seemed to be following the whispered order, curling even tighter as she turned fully on her side. Glimmer reached behind her, grabbing a stray blanket, and draped it over Adora.

“Is too bad,” Glimmer had to lean forward to hear what Adora was muttering into the floor.

“What?” Her face was so close to Adora’s and she was being intoxicated by those sweet, earthy scents again.

“Is too bad it a dream.”

“Hmmm, I beg to differ,” And with that she bent to close the remaining few inches between them, placing her lips softly, but with solid pressure against the skin of Adora’s forehead.

Adora hummed happily and seemed to settle back into sleep; Glimmer stayed with her lips pressed to Adora for a few moments until her breathing was slow and regular.

And then it was over and Glimmer was sitting bolt upright and everything in her room was spinning and all of her thoughts- even the positive ones- were screaming. _WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?? _

Adora snuggled into the blanket thrown over her while Glimmer stumbled backwards, praying Adora didn’t remember the thing when she woke up. Glimmer’s heart was pounding as if she had just stepped off a roller coaster. This project was all kinds of hell that she hadn’t been expecting. There was a part of her that wished they could just go back to being strangers; well, maybe not strangers but very tense acquaintances. At least then Glimmer knew what she was doing- she might not have had control of the situation, but she had control over her own movements. Now, everything was spinning out her grasp like a shipwreck falling to the bottom of the ocean- and she was sinking along with it.

She glanced over at Adora and winced, remembering her actions as if they held the same guilt and regret she would have if she had murdered someone. Whatever the case, she had certainly doomed herself. There was no more hiding or blocking or disregarding how she felt, nothing to maintain the safe buffer she had created between her and Adora.

That didn’t stop her from trying, however. Thoughts raced through her head, each trying to beat the other to reaching a plausible excuse. _It’s probably just the adrenaline- And your tired- And you’ve had a lot going on- You’re so so stressed- Besides, that could have just been like, friendly, right?- You weren’t thinking, and it was just a spur of the moment sorta gesture of appreciation or something like that. _

Glimmer rolled her eyes at herself this time. _You’ve had a crush on her all year so you might as well admit it. _

She groaned and buried her head in her hands; if she was going to come clean to herself then she might as well do it wholeheartedly. It was true, the stupid stolen glances in Adora’s direction, the fascination with Adora’s glowing smile, her jealousy towards Cat for always having Adora’s attention. She had hidden it under all the contempt for Adora- and herself, her feelings- and now it was all rushing out, unable to stop the feelings when they were hitting her so quickly after so long. _Stupid stupid stupid. _If she had only been able to hold it at bay for _a few more days, _she could’ve just moved on from it all and ignored Adora for the rest of her life. 

Once more, Glimmer wished she could reverse time to the way it had been before; it had been so much _easier. _

Adora chose this moment to stretch, startling Glimmer into backing fully into her dresser. As she hit the furniture, it hit the wall with a _thunk_ that rattled the objects sitting on top of it and was sure to wake Adora. With Glimmer’s good (read: horrible) luck, she was surprised to find Adora still sleeping soundly after all the rattling had stopped.

Glimmer hated looking at the girl, cringing like it burned her, but she couldn’t look away. One of girl’s hands was curled loosely in a fist by her face and the other invisible beneath the blanket. Her hair had come completely undone and spread around her head, fanning out like an angel’s halo. Glimmer couldn’t tell if she wanted to stare at her forever or never see her again. Adora was gorgeous and Glimmer hated her for it.

Glimmer walked stiffly back to where she had been sitting before and made a silent promise to herself to pretend nothing ever happened; if Adora mentioned anything, she would deny it and call her crazy- easy peasy.

But the room was quite, void of noise except for the soft murmurs of Adora’s breath, and it left far too much room for Glimmer’s thoughts to fill the empty space. And, oh boy, were they loud, loud enough for it to feel like ten thousand little mini-Glimmers were yelling as they sprinted through her mind, their little purple sneakers slamming around and making her head pound.

The hopeful ones were the worst; the ones that whispered how _happy_ Adora had seemed about the whole stupid kiss, about how she seemed to _like_ Glimmer, and asked her to dance, and how Glimmer had made her laugh, and she was just so _awed_ by Glimmer’s art. _And and and and. _Her mind kept coming up with teases Glimmer knew would be hopeless and ridiculous in the long run, but no matter how hard she tried to combat them with logic, they would pop up again like weeds in a garden.

Glimmer found herself throwing down her paint brush, not knowing how to deal with everything rushing through her head at once like cars going way above the speed limit on a highway, bound to crash. She pulled her legs up to her chest, taking the form of a ball and hoping it could keep her safe from the words pounding against the walls of her skull. Of course it did nothing to help and tears began leaking out the side of her eyes. This was like what? The fourth time she’d cried that day? It was ridiculous and exhausting and it was all Adora’s fault. Glimmer glared at the sleeping form whose peaceful rest was completely unaffected by the hurricane sitting only a few feet away. _I hate you. _

The air in the room was getting hard to breathe, filled with the smell of the forest that Adora carried and the ghost of her voice. The blood was rushing to Glimmer’s face, pounding in her ears. She felt like she was under water, thousands of feet of pressure above her, drowning in her own mind.

Glimmer straightened up and made her way unsteadily to the door; she just needed to get out, to get away from Adora. Her breath was ragged in her throat, every inhale catching like cloth on barbed wire, and she knew she was going to start full on crying, sobbing even, soon. The thought of that made it even harder to hold back.

She made it to the bathroom before the sobs started shuddering out of her, making all her other breakdowns that day look like a drizzle compared to a typhoon. Her hand slammed down on the counter, sending one of her mom’s hair products clattering into the sink. It was loud but she didn’t care, she could hardly hear it anyways. All of the competing thoughts had combined together to create thundering white noise in her head. Glimmer couldn’t hear a single voice rising above the rest, couldn’t feel anything; she was numb except for the growing pressure around her mind. She gripped the edge of the sink and looked up into her reflection, eyes full of venom and tears.

She shut her eyes as tight as physically possible like she was trying to keep the hot tears from spilling out. The door creaked open behind her but she didn’t care; it did that all the time and she must not have shut it all the way. Glimmer was far too focused on trying to release the weight growing around her brain, like a boa constricting her thoughts from flowing the way she thought they should. She had very specific rules for herself, ones she would thought would keep her safe, keep her under the radar but now... those thoughts were running away from her in every direction. She banged her fist onto the counter once more and the ache in her hand was hardly a distraction. Her emotions were screaming and she wanted to scream back, shouting at them to fall in order.

She didn’t have time to pay attention to a an old door that couldn’t even manage to stay closed by itself; that is until it started speaking, “Hey there.”

Glimmer turned to face Adora with a stare that could have melted sand into glass, “Get out.”

Her voice would make most turn and run but Adora continued, “I heard something fall and it woke me up and you weren’t there but then I heard you-“

“Get OUT!”

Adora just blinked at her, almost uncomprehending, before taking a few steps towards Glimmer slowly and carefully like she was approaching a wild animal. And then her arms were around Glimmer and Glimmer was forgetting how to breathe. Her body went rigid, her arms clamped to her side and her hands out straight like a wooden soldier’s. She didn’t know what the hell to do; she didn’t even know what she _wanted_ to do. On one hand, she could give in- give into Adora, give into her stupid hug, give into the fact that she’d had a wildly obvious crush on the soccer player this entire time. Alternatively, she could take the easy route and simply push Adora away as she had been.

That’s when Adora apparently decided she wanted to make Glimmer to throw up because she leaned forward far enough to plant a soft kiss on Glimmer’s forehead.

Glimmer’s voice shook when Adora backed away after only a second, “What are you doing?”

Adora’s smile was horribly sweet, “You took care of me before, now I’m just taking care of you.”

Glimmer felt that she was on the verge of collapse; it been a long day, excruciatingly so. She legs and arms were shaking and her head felt light again, but not in any positive way, and she could swear the ringing in her ears was the last of her sanity leaking out of her body. Her mind was losing any traction it had left and her body was following it quickly, “I’m so tired.”

And with that Glimmer allowed herself to melt forward into Adora, tears dampening her red jersey. She had somehow managed curled inward and onto Adora at the same time.

Adora seemed to be handling the situation much better than Glimmer would have, offering comforting shushes and not complaining when Glimmer’s hands gripped the back of her jersey far too tightly. Her hand was rubbing up and down her back but Glimmer was hardly aware of the fact, simply letting go of the tension she had been holding since being assigned as partners with Adora, hell maybe since she had seen Adora in her chemistry class on the first day of school.

“Do you want to rest for a little while? Get some sleep?”

“What?” Glimmer took a hiccuping breath, the flood of tears hand begun to slow and was now coming almost completely to a stop. She looked up and straight into Adora’s blue eyes, filled with concern; she had forgotten how close their faces were to each other but the fact of the matter came crashing back to her with a force that almost knocked the wind out of her.

“I was asking if you wanted to take a break or go to sleep for a while?” Her voice was gentle but their chests were still more or less pressed together and Glimmer could feel the sound vibrating upwards. The clarity of the sound’s movement was startling but Glimmer didn’t move away.

She shook her head, “I need to get this done. If I don’t, our project’ll get marked down and then I’ll _never_ get my chem grade up.”

Adora moved back, supposedly to make eye contact with Glimmer more comfortably, and Glimmer scolded herself for missing the warmth of the other girl’s body. Adora’s eye brows were crinkled and nudged at each other, “But... I told you before, I’ve seen your grades- and I’m so sorry if that sounds weird I really don’t mean it in a creepy way- but, like I said, your grades aren’t as as bad as Weaver makes it seem!”

Glimmer sighed and reached for her back pocket; by some miracle- or maybe a curse- the report card she had snatched off the counter earlier was still there, “You must have only seen my test scores- they’re fine. But my classwork is a disaster. It’s like I _get_ the material and I can show that on tests, but I can never focus enough to do all the stupid busywork Weaver hands out. So my overall grade is... kinda trash.”

She handed the card over to Adora, watching with sweaty palms as she scanned down the row of letters.

She looked up after a moment, confusion written on her face, “How in the world do you have a C in art?! If anything, I’d expect you to have 100 percent!”

Glimmer shrugged her tired shoulders but she felt a smirk tugging its way along her lips, “I tend to interpret the prompts a little more... _loosely_ than my teacher would prefer.”

She shrugged again, this time playfully, “What can I say, I like to have my own ideas about things.”

Adora mirrored her smile, “Yeah I’m sure you do.”

_WHAT DID _THAT _MEAN?! _

Adora didn’t go into it further, simply stretching her arms out to the side with a yawn. She handed the card back, “Well you’re right, we need to make sure we do well on this project so we can get that grade up.”

Glimmer’s heart wasn’t sure to plummet or rise; Adora had seen Glimmer’s bad grades and had _agreed_ with her. On the other hand... _“we”_ was starting to sound- maybe not great- but ok in Glimmer’s mind.

“So,” Adora continued oblivious to Glimmer’s revolving door of thoughts, “we- especially _you_, Miss I Don’t Need Sleep- should get some rest so we don’t make some stupid mistake that wrecks it. I want to do this well.”

Glimmer allowed Adora to lead her back to her room but stopped when she felt herself being pushed towards her bed, “Where are you going to sleep?”

Adora gestured casually at the floor and the blanket she had set aside when she had gotten up to check on Glimmer. The thought of her going out of her way to make sure she was all right made something inside Glimmer wriggle and she wasn’t sure if it was in a good way or a bad way.

She shook her head, “No, you’re the guest. I may be a goblin, but my mother taught me some manners; she’d be horrified if she found out I’d let you sleep on the floor to begin with.”

Adora frowned, “Well I’m not going to let _you_ sleep on the floor.”

Glimmer put her hands on her hips, a small mountain of stubbornness.

“Hey, I’ve got an idea- let’s just share it! It’s a big enough bed for the two of us!” Adora’s face had brightened considerably while Glimmer’s blanched to a sickly shade of green khaki.

“It’ll be fun- like a sleep over!” Adora continued her sales pitch, unaware or uncaring of how wide Glimmer’s eyes had gotten. _Is this girl actively trying to drive me crazy?? _

Before she could make anymore arguments against it, Glimmer found herself being pulled along by Adora who, when having reached the bed, sat down and patted the space beside her.

Glimmer sat down stiffly and glanced over at the other girl, hoping she offer some sort of explanation of what she was supposed to do next.

Adora turned her head, “So do you want to take the wall side or the outside?”

“Uhhh... the wall; that’s where I usually sleep anyways,” Well if she didn’t have a choice...

“Ok great!” Adora stretched out, both of their shoes having been kicked off long before, and the action forced Glimmer to climb over to the other portion of the bed.

Glimmer threw a sheet over top both of their bodies and lay stiffly on her back. After a few moments she realized the lights were still were still on and she clapped her hands lightly to shut them off, careful to do it quietly in case Adora had already passed out again. Her idea was proved wrong when the silhouette next to her let out a little, “Ooo.”

She wasn’t sure if the sound was in response to the fact she had clap-on lights or because of the glow in the dark stars pasted on her ceiling that were now beginning to brighten. Glimmer stared at into their dim, green-yellow light as if they could offer answers. None were supplied.

Next to Glimmer, Adora had relaxed onto her side and in a matter of minutes was breathing heavily once more. The sound was somehow calming, inviting her to do the same, and despite the adrenaline running through her, Glimmer felt her eyelids growing heavier by the second.

——————————————————-

Glimmer had slept nearly an hour when a buzzing in her pocket woke her up and she realized she had gone to sleep in the pair of denim shorts she had worn to school the day before. She pulled the buzzing phone out of her pocket and the glaring blue light of its screen burned through the dark, making her squint. It was Bow, texting her for whatever reason at one in the morning:

**Look I am SO sorry about that I know you wouldn’t want me to give your number out and you know I wouldn’t normally do that but Adora was kinda freaking out and she explained the situation to me so it made sense **

**I understand if you’re mad and I just really hope nothing bad happened **

Glimmer looked down at Adora before deciding to reply. The girl was curled in a loose fetal position again, her hands near her face. In their sleep, the two had snuggled closer together and the curve of Adora’s back fit neatly alongside Glimmer’s stomach and hips. The proximity made Glimmer’s insides churn and the blood rush to her face, but she could also feel herself smiling down at Adora through the darkness. Glimmer reached out and tucked a loose strand of blonde hair behind Adora’s ear- for the last time, of course- and finally texted back:

_Nah it’s ok. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All kudos and comments go straight to my angsty soul  
Love y’all 🖤✨


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok I know I said the last chapter was the end of the angst but it turns out I was lying. But it’s really cute too ;) 
> 
> The last chapter got so much positive feedback and it’s so so appreciated. I love you guys. All kudos and comments and even bookmarks are so meaningful to me because they show me that you’re interested in what my shitty little brain is piecing together.

Glimmer woke up to a tense chest and and clenching fingers, having dreamt about failing chem; she did love anxiety.

She groaned quietly at her glaring phone which told her it was three in the morning. Adora was still sleeping soundly beside her and Glimmer blushed at the realization that her arm was wrapped around Adora’s waist. Quickly withdrawing her arm, she thanked her lucky stars (or maybe just the ones glowing sickly above her on the ceiling) that she had woken up before Adora.

Adora murmured something at the movement but did not appear to be returning to life anytime soon. Glimmer wondered if there was anyway to continue the much needed work without disturbing her. There were two problems: 1) she would need to clamber over Adora to get out of bed and 2) she would need to turn the light on to be able to paint. _Ugh_.

Glimmer was almost grateful that she didn’t even get through the first step. _Almost_. Almost because Adora had decided to wake up at the exact moment that Glimmer’s knees were straddling the slighter girl’s thighs in a way that would make heat rush to Glimmer’s face anytime but _especially_ if Adora happened to open her eyes just as Glimmer moved, trying to ignore the blush spreading across her face. But of course, simply _of course_, Adora did flicker back to life in this specific moment.

Adora blinked her eyes open slowly, adjusting to the difference between whatever she was dreaming and the world around her, before looking up into Glimmer’s face that was quickly turning from pink to burgundy.

“Hello?” Adora asked in a happy but half asleep voice. She rubbed her eyes and as the glaze was lifted from their blue, the curtain of sleep seemed to rise from her mind as well. She clapped her hands lightly, commanding the overhead light to flicker on.

At that point Adora looked down at the space between them- or, more presumably, the lack of space. Adora’s face was quickly becoming as flushed as Glimmer’s, the blush shining through her cheeks until she looked like a stop light glowing red. Glimmer was scared to wonder what it meant, scared to let herself overthink it as she inevitably would.

“Oh. Hi?” Adora was stuttering, her voice no longer carrying its earlier blissfulness; oh, good another thing for Glimmer to overthink.

Glimmer hurried to move away, distance herself from Adora as much as she could or at least get out of the horribly awkward position. Unfortunately for Glimmer, her bad luck and poor coordination coupled to create an even worse situation. Her foot caught on the edge of the comforter and as she attempted to practically run away from the bed, she found herself instead sprawled over top of Adora, nearly nose to nose. Close enough to count every freckle splayed across the shine of Adora’s blush, close enough to see every fleck of silver in her eyes, close enough to feel Adora’s breath fanning rapidly against Glimmer’s lips.

She finally managed to stand up, tripping backwards and stuttering out an apology, “I- I’m so sorry I was just trying to get up without waking you up and- you know- it’s a small bed but then you _did_ wake up-“

Adora gave a small smile, almost an apology herself, “Glimmer, it’s ok.”

“-so you know I really don’t know what I excepted but,” Glimmer was still rambling on, “God, this whole project is a mess and- wait what?”

“It’s _ok_.”

“Oh. Right. Ok, then.”

“Yeah.”

They stayed there frozen for a moment, Adora only half sitting up and Glimmer standing next to the bed awkwardly like some video game NPC. Finally Adora patted her hands on her thighs, an obvious attempt at saying _Can we please change the topic now? _

“So... what were you doing?” Adora asked and Glimmer was grateful for the distraction her question offered.

“Uh, I just woke up and thought I would get started on the project,” She left out the fact that her anxiety and some stupid dream about her grade was the reason she had woken up.

Adora shrugged, “Ok, cool let’s get to work.”

“Well, I mean, you can go back to sleep; I can keep working on it by my self.”

Something flickered on Adora’s face for a moment that Glimmer couldn’t quite place. Part of her wanted it to be disappointment, another part calling her a fool for thinking Adora would care, and the last part chasing the other two with a broom for being so obsessed with the stupid girl.

“No, it’s ok, I wanna help. Besides, you told me you would wake me up when you needed my help again,” Adora’s grin was almost a smirk, “Well I guess you did wake me up... not exactly the way I was expecting, but I’m up none the less.”

Glimmer resisted the urge to tell her that she doesn’t need her help (and hold back that what she really needed was some space) but the looming piles of art materials made her hold her tongue. Because the problem was she _did_ need Adora’s help if she wanted to get this done anytime before six in the morning.

She sighed, the adrenaline wearing off slowly but surely enough that she was feeling the soft touches of exhaustion on the edges of her mind. She could either tell Adora to go back to sleep and have _lots_ of time to think about her while she struggled to get this stupid thing done or she could let Adora stay up and help her. Things would get done a lot faster but... that would be a lot more time spent with Adora and a lot more material for her brain to process and analyze and store away to obsess over later. But getting another hour of sleep would be nice too...

“Yeah, ok,” Glimmer rubbed the back of her neck with one of her hands and then gestured with the other at Adora’s little pile of clay that was far smaller than it had been at the beginning of the night. Much like Glimmer’s sanity.

Adora stretched up from the bed, yawning as she stood and pausing with her hands over her head so the hem of shirt crept just above the waist band of her black sweatpant shorts. Somehow it had escaped Glimmer’s attention that Adora was wearing literal actual booty shorts. Not that it was something she would need or should be paying attention to. She also hadn’t noticed the way Adora’s hair swept over her shoulders when it was completely down, in no way hindered by some clinging rubber bands. Not that Glimmer had ever really had the opportunity to see Adora this- _god_, what was the word she was looking for, had been looking for the whole night? She settled on _authentic_ this time, but it still didn’t seem right.

Adora plopped down in front of the clay and it wasn’t until she started talking that Glimmer realized she was still standing there, awkward as always. Adora had her eyebrows scrunched together and the blue of her eyes had become glossy with sleep, once again vacant of their usual shine. Glimmer was tempted to tell her to go the hell back to bed before she face planted into the clay, but then she saw the look of determination in Adora’s face as she silently counted, her mouth moving in wordless concentration, and decided it was best to let the girl go right on ahead if that’s what she really wanted to do.

But Adora _was_ talking and Glimmer was forced to break away from watching to actually listen to what she was saying, “How many more do I need to make? Like only ten, right?”

Ugh, she was asking Glimmer to deal with numbers this early in the morning? Painting she could do with her eyes closed; numbers? No thank you. Glimmer scowled at the little painted balls and the plain ones next to them add some, subtracted others, shook her head because _Wait, why am I subtracting? _and finally decided that Adora was probably right and that eight was close enough to ten, “Uhhh, yeah, ten is right.”

“Ok, cool,” _Isn’t that like the fifth time she’s said ‘ok, cool’? _“I’ll get to work on those ten more then!”

“Right, yeah, ok,” Glimmer was _still_ standing.

She edged around Adora and begun pouring more paint onto her palette where it had dried. Her brushes were tacky and somewhat crusted with paint because she had forgotten to clean them between developing (aka admitting to) a crush, having a break down over said crush, and then being lead to bed by- oh, what a surprise- the previously mentioned crush. It wasn’t really a big deal though- the brushes, that is- just another frustration like the cherry on top of this weird, chaotic mess of an assignment. A giggle escaped from between Glimmer’s lips and it was almost hysterical.

Adora turned to look at Glimmer, flipping her hair over her shoulder as she did so in order to make direct eye contact with her. She had a curious but upturned expression, like she was actually interested, “What’s so funny?”

_Well, you see, I have a big fat crush on you and you look really cute sitting there with messed up hair and your head turned to the side like some puppy trying to understand what’s going on and this is probably the only time I’m ever going to be able to tell you because I’m so exhausted that all my anxiety and shame and guilt over the fact that I like you has been completely thrown out the window with the rest of my self control._ Glimmer shook her head, trying to dislodge the run on sentence of a thought that was trying to make its way through her vocal cords; ok maybe she had some self control left. Enough to manage, “Yeah, I’m just kinda losing it right now and my brain’s all fuzzy so everything’s kinda funny, you know?”

Adora snorted, “Boy, do I- that’s when I get my best work done.”

It was Glimmer’s turn to look at the other with mild confusion, “What do you mean? You always seem to be on top of everything; like, _always_.”

“Ha, that is my greatest trick of them all- illusion,” Adora raised one of her hands from the clay to wiggle her fingers like _woo, magic_ before shaking her head downwards and laughing, “I have, like, nothing together. _Nothing_. Between classes and soccer and volunteering and babysitting to get some cash, I have precisely zero seconds to breathe. I have to get up at around four almost every morning so I can do the homework I couldn’t get done the night before.”

Glimmer stared at her like she was crazy. At this point Glimmer was pretty sure the girl was, “Oh my god, you can give yourself a break sometimes! It’s ok to relax with us slackers.”

Adora rolled her eyes- _When did she start doing that_\- and gave Glimmer a questioning grin, “Oh so now you’re a slacker? Miss I Woke Up At Three To Finish A Project? Also Miss I Refused To Sleep Until I Was Literally Dragged To Bed.”

Glimmer faltered; it was the first time either of them had brought up or even eluded to the whole bathroom incident, “Yeah well, I am compared to you, Princess Perfectionist.”

It had slipped out of her mouth without any thought and Glimmer immediately wished she could take it back. A thousand expressions flit across Adora’s face, Glimmer’s mind taking a snap shot of each but not understanding any of them. Adora settled on a strained smile and Glimmer knew she had struck a nerve. _God that was stupid; she pushes herself too hard and you shouldn’t have brought it up. _

“Ha, yeah, I guess that is me,” Adora tried weakly to bring the mood to where it had been before.

Glimmer shook her head, unpracticed in the art of actually apologizing to anyone, “No it was dumb of me to say something like that and, and I’m sorry if it bothered you at all.”

The fake smile fell from Adora’s lips; Glimmer didn’t like the frown she was facing, but at least it was real. Adora took a deep breath after chewing on her lip for a moment and then began speaking. Her voice was quiet, almost timid, “Why do you call me that?”

“Oh, god, um. I guess it’s just because you kind of are a perfectionist- at least it seems that way! I understand if that’s like just a front or something- no, uh, front isn’t really what I meant to say- but like I do the exact same thing so it’s cool. But just, you know, everything you do seems perfect. From your grades, to your hair, hell even your hand writing is perfect! So, like, I just always thought of you as a perfectionist but like-“ Glimmer was rattling on, grasping on to literally any words that seemed to correlate and smashing them into sentences and praying Adora would stop her soon.

“No... I mean Princess. Why do you call me Princess? You did it just now and you said it when we were texting earlier. But I do think you might have been kind of mad that time.”

_She remembered something I said?_ There was definitely warmth rising to Glimmer’s face as it dawned on her that she had called Adora a pet name not once, but twice. _Uuuuuuugh_.

“Oh, I don’t know, “ Glimmer didn’t look up the clay in her hands that she continued to paint- _rsssh, rsssh, rssh_. She hoped the pink of her hair hid the red tones her face was beginning to take on

“Yeah, ok,” Disappointment, maybe even sadness, thinly vailed by casualness. Glimmer recognized Adora’s voice because it sounded much like her own.

“But I mean, you do kind remind me of a princess. Like, you’ve got the not-a-hair-out-of-place look, and those big shiny eyes, and you’re so nice to everyone so like, yeah. Watch out Disney, next princess coming through,” All Glimmer could think about was getting the sadness out of Adora’s voice- she could over analyze the cause later- and tried to ignore her growing blush and the stupid ache she was feeling in her chest.

“You really think so?” Adora gave a tiny laugh- _Glad that worked_. Glimmer could’ve sworn Adora was blushing as well. But it was probably just the light.

“Yeah, I’m not a liar,” Glimmer smirked playfully and Adora beamed back.

“What, you mean a liar like you thought I was?” Adora wiggled her eyebrows but there was a small coldness in her eyes and enough seriousness in her tone to make Glimmer’s stomach do a flip.

“Well it turns out your not a liar- as far as I’m aware- so your point doesn’t really stand,” Glimmer was trying really hard to be nice; really, _really_ hard. Everything inside of her was telling her to push Adora away, keep her at arm’s distance or further, was telling her that liking Adora was _wrong_ and would only lead to her getting hurt... but Glimmer couldn’t stand the sad little notes in Adora’s voice. She couldn’t help but try to push that away.

“Hmm, I guess so.”

“Do you even _have_ the ability to lie; like at this point I’m wondering if you were granted magic productivity powers in exchange for being able to lie.”

Glimmer was rewarded by the laugh that burst from Adora and continued on, “Hey maybe that’s your Disney princess plot! Like Ariel and her voice or whatever!”

Adora’s laugh was ringing through her room again and once more the tension in Glimmer grew, her thoughts competing to hold power over each other and arguing over which had the correct stance on making Adora happy. Some were disgusted, others terrified, and a small bundle in the corner celebrating. Glimmer thought it was all rather stupid.

But Adora sat up from where she had doubled over laughing and was talking now, “More like I traded mental stability and a normal sleep schedule for productivity.”

Glimmer snorted, “Ahh, the glorious life of a teenager, isn’t it beautiful?”

Adora giggled, “Amen. Tell you what though- I am a _shit_ liar.”

“A princess must not cuss!” Glimmer pretended to look aghast before remembering that she wasn’t supposed to be playing along.

Adora let lose another one of those laughs that made Glimmer pray her mom hadn’t come home early, “Mmm well that just proves it, doesn’t it? Not a princess. But I mean really- you’ll know when I’m lying because my hands get all sweating and fidgety and my voice gets so squeaky. You could tell from a mile away that I was lying.”

“That honestly sounds like me on a daily basis. Not that I lie or anything on a daily basis,” _That’s a lie_, “I just look like a complete weirdo every time I open my mouth.”

“That’s not true,” Adora was frowning so sincerely it made Glimmer squirm, “You seem really chill most of the time.”

“Chill?” Glimmer puffed out a laugh that lacked any sort of humor, “Woo boy, that is _not_ me.”

Adora’s stupid frown had shifted to a gentle smile that was even worse. She ducked her head down so she could make eye contact with Glimmer, “Hey, no really. You’re really cool. You’re a lot of fun to hang out with. And I think a lot more people agree with me than you know.”

Something felt like it was forcing its way up Glimmer’s throat and she wasn’t sure if it was her dinner or her heart. Her words were choked out when she spoke, “Oh wow, well ok thanks.”

Adora nodded, seemingly satisfied with Glimmer’s conssecion, “I mean really, you seem to get a little flustered sometimes, but that’s not too unusual. We all do that sometimes. You know I can’t lie now so, you know I really mean it- you’re cool.”

Glimmer huffed, hanging her head backwards, “Adora, I had a panic attack because I had to move to your seat today. It’s pathetic, ok? I over react to everything and it’s nothing near ‘cool’ ok?”

“Oh, Glimmer, it’s really not a big deal. I mean come _on_\- you’re funny and smart and you’re such a good artist. Just because life is too much sometimes, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person or pathetic or anything.”

“Then why does everybody hate me?! If I’m really that great, why do most people avoid me as if I have the plague?!” _Rssh, rsssh, rssh_\- the bristles of Glimmer’s paint brushed hard as ever against the clay even as her hands shook.

Adora opened her mouth to respond but Glimmer dove right back in, “I’ll tell you why- because I’m a crybaby! And I’m negative and cynical about everything and I don’t trust anyone so I push them away. How much is it going to take for you to realize I’m not someone you want to be around?!”

“Glimmer,” Adora leaned forward and reached out with her arm she could place her warm, but probably dirty, hand softly on Glimmer’s shoulder, “you don’t have to push me away. I know you’ve been trying to since we got assigned to each other but you really don’t need to. I’d love to be friends with you and I’d be even more honored to have your trust in return. You can trust me; I promise I won’t hurt you.”

The last sentence was almost a whisper and Glimmer wasn’t even sure it was real. When she finally spoke, she didn’t mean for her voice to sound as incredulous as it came out, “What?”

Adora’s hand moved to push a thick wave of Glimmer’s hair behind her ear and then rested itself lightly on Glimmer’s cheek, “I said I won’t hurt you. And that I want to be your friend.”

Despite her best judgment, Glimmer moved her own hand over Adora’s and looked into those big blue eyes. Their intensity made an electric buzz dance up and down Glimmer’s spine, “Ok. Cool. Yeah, um, cool.”

Adora smiled, always gentle and sweet, “So no more trying to push me away, right?”

Glimmer nodded, her and Adora’s hands hardly shifting with the movement, “Deal.”

After a moment Glimmer snorted, “Bad choice, really.”

“What?”

“Bad choice- being friends with me. You’re never going to have peace again.”

Adora laughed as they moved their hands away from each other. Somehow the movement didn’t feel awkward at all, “Good, I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

Glimmer shifted away from Adora but didn’t try to increase the space between them. Adora seemed to get the clue and moved her hands back to the clay; her body was still leaning towards Glimmer.

They fell into silence but it held a sort of warmth that Glimmer didn’t quite understand but wasn’t about to argue against. Friendships weren’t exactly easy to come by for Glimmer and even if all the logic in her mind was telling her this one was going to end in poison, she refused to to cut it off, wasn’t going to be the toxin spreading under both their skins. She couldn’t, not now, _god_ not now. Not now that her heart had latched onto this girl- this cute, smart, funny girl who seemed to be under the impression that Glimmer held all these qualities too. Every time she thought about Adora, her heart fluttered and her mind screamed about how impossibly _stupid_ she was for liking Adora. And that’s when Glimmer knew she was in deep trouble.

“Hey!”

Glimmer snapped her attention to Adora’s exclamation, “What’s wrong?”

Adora beamed one of her ray of sunshine smiles at Glimmer, “I think I finished!”

Glimmer looked down at her own pile which contained at least 30 more spheres in need of painting. _Oof_. She tried to muster a smile, “Ok, great.”

“Is there anything else I can do?” Adora turned her head from side to side, as if looking for a big sign that said STEP #2. Glimmer laughed to herself; she could use some signs like that.

“You could start stringing the dry protons together,” She pointed at the pile on the other side of her; it was a tangle of wire and twine disguised by the sorting Glimmer had done earlier as having some sort of organization, “Then we’ll just have to let these ones dry- oh _and_ these ones that I haven’t painted yet- and wire them all together and _then_ we’ll be done.”

“With exactly,” Adora looked down at her wrist, checking an imaginary watch, “5 minutes to spare.”

Glimmer gave a dry laugh; cynicism was a new look on Adora and, oh boy, did that work with Glimmer’s sense of humor too well. She couldn’t help but wonder why she hadn’t seen it before. Was it because it was late and she was tired and that’s just when this dark side of Adora’s humor came out? Or, dare Glimmer even think of it, was Adora becoming comfortable enough with her to drop some of her sunny, innocent persona she thought she needed to get people to like her? It struck Glimmer suddenly that she had only been actually talking to Adora for the past three days. Maybe this was just who Adora is, maybe Glimmer just didn’t know anything about her.

Glimmer was startled out of her thoughts by the delicate but strong hand placed on her shoulder as Adora walked behind her. The pressure was light but it made her skin crawl; it was pathetic how she was overwhelmed by everything Adora did. And then it was gone. She forced a casual laugh, “What was that?”

Adora looked up from where she had already settled on Glimmer’s other side, “Oh I don’t know. It’s just a thing I do when I walk by someone so I don’t like spook them or something, you know? I didn’t want you to jerk and mess up you painting.”

“Oh,” _Why does she sound embarrassed; that’s pretty normal, right? _“Well thanks.”

“Sure, anything for my _friend_,” Adora gave a wink that made her eyes sparkle and her nose wrinkle.

Glimmer’s paintbrush skewed to the side, brushing pink paint over hand that very nearly matched the shade of her face. _Shit_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is actually the first real fic I’ve ever written and I’m totally making it up as I go so all your love and encouragement means the world to me.   
I actually started crying reading everyone’s comments last week. 
> 
> I know I say this every time but I really do love you guys; you’re the reason I keep motivated and keep writing 🖤✨
> 
> See you next week!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is just a nice little break because I think we all need some crack fic after season 3. As always, there’s hella fluff just because… I like it. 
> 
> Anyways I decided to insert the headcannon that like me, Adora gets chattery and kinda loopy (read: flirty) when she’s tired. It was funny to me at least and it seemed to go along with Drunk Adora™️

They finished far sooner than Glimmer expected them to. At least finished as much as they could, leaving the freshly painted protons to be dealt with in the- well it already _was_ morning- but later at least. Adora had wired the electrons’ form together with expert precision which had surprised Glimmer more than it should have; by now, she should have figured that Adora was basically an expert at everything. Well, almost everything. Apparently art wasn’t her strong suit because she had come spent most of her time threading the protons together multitasking by pausing to practically drool over Glimmer’s painting job.

In Adora’s defense, she was loopy- incredibly so. The lack of sleep had obviously caught up with her because she was acting ridiculous, all previously standard composure completely abandoned. She kept giggling at random things like her hair getting tangled in the wire (Glimmer had to help her untie it because Adora was far too enthusiastic about cutting her soft locks off). Worst of all, she kept leaning towards Glimmer, bumping her face against Glimmer’s shoulder, and _cooing_ for god’s sake. She mumbled seemingly whatever came to mind and almost all it seemed to center around Glimmer. About her art, about her hair, about her eyes, about the posters on her walls. Once, she had leaned over, resting her weight on her elbow and just staring up at Glimmer from below. She hadn’t stopped until Glimmer had asked what was wrong.

_“Nothing. You’re just really pretty.” _

Oh.

Glimmer knew it was just the side effects of Adora’s exhaustion, that she wasn’t thinking her clear, logical thoughts she usually did and that she probably- no, definitely- didn’t actually mean it. That didn’t mean Glimmer didn’t squirm where she sat or that her throat didn’t make a strange gulping sound when she tried to swallow and that she didn’t blush deep red at Adora’s rain of compliments. Sometimes when Adora’s face found Glimmer’s shoulder she wouldn’t resist the urge to run her fingers through the blond hair and would let herself feel rewarded by Adora’s happy little hums. Her mind yelled at her to push Adora away but she was so close.

So Glimmer decided to let herself pretend- at least for now, at least for this half an hour while her overhead light meant her window was the only glowing window on her whole block. She could pretend that it was ok to like Adora and indulge herself in whatever the hell Adora was doing.

Despite Adora’s apparent drunkenness, she finished the part Glimmer had assigned her to aptly and faster than Glimmer would have guessed with all of Adora’s breaks to whisper into Glimmer’s side.

Adora placed the mildly dangerous looking piece of wire and clay down in front of her and plodded over to Glimmer comically on her hands and knees. She sat down with an _oof_ behind her, stretching her arms loosely around Glimmer’s neck and placing her head on her shoulder.

Glimmer felt her body tense as she took a sharp inhale, “What are you doing?”

Adora started drawing away, “Oh sorry-“

“No it’s ok!” The words came out of Glimmer’s mouth so quickly she wasn’t even sure she had said them.

“Ok then,” Adora settled back into Glimmer’s back, as if it was more comfortable to be close than far apart. Glimmer let herself entertain the idea for just a moment before realizing it was ridiculous to think Adora would share Glimmer’s begrudgingly admitted feelings.

“But... what were you doing?” What the hell- she mights as well torture herself and entertain the notion, right?

“It’s just that this is how me and Cat hang out a lot.”

“Oh,” The timid little ball of warmth that had worked so hard to climb up Glimmer’s chest suddenly plummeted. Just the mention of Cat was enough to set Glimmer on edge, but the thought that Glimmer was just a temporary replacement, a stand-in for Cat? _That_ was the poison her mind had been warning her about earlier, an insidious venom that made Glimmer sick to her stomach.

“I just assumed that’s how most friends act, ya know?” Adora continued on, completely unaware of Glimmer’s rushing thoughts only inches away. But hey at least she was trying to act like friends? The warmth began to rise again but it was sickly.

Glimmer huffed a laugh without actually laughing, “Why would you need to _assume_? You’ve got tons of friends.”

Adora shrugged, “I mean, I know a lot of people but I wouldn’t say I’m really close with any of them. Cat’s my only real friend.”

Adora’s voice was higher than usual and held an odd sing-song quality that made the whole, relatively serious conversation feel completely surreal.

“‘cept for you of course.”

“What?”

“You’re my friend too,” Glimmer could feel Adora’s smile on her neck as she spoke and Glimmer was worried she going to start glowing.

“Well that’s one good thing isn’t it?” Glimmer was smiling too now.

At some point Adora made the decision that the correct place for her head was in Glimmer’s lap, settling her face into the softness of Glimmer’s thigh. She looked up with quickly drooping eyes as Glimmer’s hands and paintbrush worked above her. Apparently she didn’t notice Glimmer’s pounding heart or screaming brain because she fell asleep quickly.

Glimmer stuttered through her remaining work because she kept gazing down at Adora, trying to comprehend how this had happened. Less than a week ago she had hated Adora- or at least thought she did- now, she was sitting with the girl curled in her lap like a snuggly cat and a throbbing crushing in her chest. It was too much for head to wrap itself around; especially if part of her mind was still in vicious denial.

Glimmer tried to sort through her options, sifting them through a mental filing system. She could try to be friends with Adora but that would risk her crush growing and that would be painful because _obviously_ Adora would never return the favor. There was also the fact that Adora would probably get tired of her quickly and then that would really hurt and even if she didn’t, Cat held herself far above Glimmer and would never tolerate being around her so then Adora would have to choose between one of them and of course she would choose the friend she’d had for literally her entire life. _Ok so what’s the alternative?_ Stop hanging out with her, push her away as far as possible. Her brain had an immediate answer, but it wasn’t without consequences either. Namely, it might hurt Adora’s feelings and Glimmer wasn’t sure she could stand to see sadness in those big blue eyes- especially if she knew she had caused it. And... Glimmer couldn’t bet on her crush wearing off just because she distanced herself from Adora. Now that Glimmer had ripped the top of Pandora’s Box off, there was no guarantee the flood of emotions that drenched her every time she looked at Adora would stop any time soon.

Glimmer finished painting and sighed, letting herself relax for the first time since Adora had texted her the evening before. She set down her brush and the last “proton.” There was nothing she could do until they dried and she let her shoulders slump forward. Glimmer could feel the exhaustion running through her very bones. She hadn’t pulled a night like this in a long time and it was definitely catching up with her. Her eyelids felt almost as heavy as Adora’s head in her lap. _Adora._

She let her smile creep towards fondness as she looked down at Adora. She was too tired to listen to her stupid, crazy brain and anyways, even her thoughts were starting to get sluggish. It gave Glimmer the time to think- actually think- without having to compete with her own input. Adora looked peaceful but very very human. She struck Glimmer as perfect but somehow she had never seen someone look more real than Adora did in that moment. She looked absolutely and, with out a doubt, perfectly sincere- _ah_, so that’s the word she had been looking for.

Glimmer smiled as she slumped forward.

———————————————————————

When she woke up, she was hunched over Adora exactly where she had passed out. She couldn’t have fallen asleep for more than half an hour but it was long enough to develop one hell of a crick in her neck.

Her eyesight was nearly as blurry as her thoughts but she was aware of two things, the first being that the darkness outside her window had become marginally lighter and was beginning to shift from pure obsidian blue to gray. The other thing she knew was that there was something solid and yellow lying across her lap. _Oh, it’s Adora. _

_Shit, ADORA._ It suddenly hit Glimmer that it was morning and her mom would be here any minute and Adora was not only here but sound asleep and Glimmer had no idea how she was going to get her out of the house. Glimmer’s mom had made the habit of checking on Glimmer to make sure she made it to bed at least once in a night while she stayed up until her-mother-didn’t-_want_-to-know when. She would not be incredibly enthused to find her daughter curled on the floor with some strange girl that she had no idea about. But it wasn’t like Glimmer could throw Adora out onto the streets in a not so great part of town at 4:30 in the morning. Hell, she wasn’t even sure she could wake Adora.

“Adora, Adora, hey Adora. Wake up,” She shook the girl’s shoulders without being rewarded with any sort of response, “_Adora!!_”

The girl was completely gone and the only signs she showed of being effected at all by Glimmer’s continuous movement was the occasional noise. She might as well have been a large rock for as responsive as she was being. At least a rock wouldn’t piss Glimmer’s mom off so much, though.

Glimmer gave up, huffing and letting her hands fall to her sides. She stood up slowly and carefully so that Adora’s head didn’t roll off her lap with the inevitable clunk that comes with someone’s head hitting the floor (Glimmer knew about this sound because she had experienced it herself multiple times). She sighed through her nose and with her hands on her hips she realized how much she must look like some parent looking at their unruly child and saying _“Now what am I going to do with you?”_ Gross.

Glimmer flopped the palms of her hands against her thighs for a moment before resolving to physically move Adora. She bent down, hooked her arms under Adora’s armpits, and lugged her own body upwards, hoping Adora’s form would move with her. Unfortunately, Glimmer soon found that Adora was roughly as heavy as a large rock as well. Maybe even a small boulder. Either that or Glimmer was somewhat weak. She shook her head- _nah that couldn’t be it. _

She tried a different approach this time, keeping her knees bent and tugging Adora as she scooted backwards in baby steps. She was able to swivel Adora so her feet were facing the door and her head was towards Glimmer’s bed. It was at this point that Glimmer realized there was a maze of wire and clay and whatever else she had piled up between them and the other side of the room; there was no way she was going to be able to navigate all that.

Glimmer groaned with her head thrown back before placing Adora back down as gently as she could and wincing when the girl slipped out of her arms a little too quickly. _Ah, there’s the _clunk. Glimmer was almost sure Adora would wake up as her head made contacted with the floor. When she made no movement whatsoever, it flashed across Glimmer’s mind that maybe the impact was enough to actually knock her out.

She pushed the thought aside and began moving the materials out of the way. It took at least ten minutes for Glimmer to reach the bed and in that time period she wasn’t able to figure out anything that resembled the next step. She had already found that she couldn’t lift Adora and even if she _could_, her mother would be even less happy with finding Glimmer _in bed_ with some random girl.

Glimmer set Adora back down, placing the girl’s back against the mattress side. The only thing she could think of doing was attempting to wake Adora again. This time her rough shakes were successful and Adora sat up only slightly straighter than the position Glimmer had slumped her in. Adora turned her head as she looked around the room with bleary eyes as if she didn’t know where she was.

“Adora, thank god you’re alive- I mean awake. Look, I need you to hide,” Glimmer was whispering just in case her mom was home early by some odd twist of fate.

“Ooo ok,” Adora struggled to her feet, using one of Glimmer’s arms as an anchor to haul herself up. She began walking unsteadily to some unknown location in Glimmer’s room.

“Where the hell are you going?!”

“Hiding,” Adora twisted rather floppily to give Glimmer a conspiratorial wink.

She made her way to Glimmer’s closet, pulling open one of the paneled doors and slipping inside.

“Adora!” Glimmer hissed, “Come out of the closet!”

“Ok, I’m a lesbian,” Adora stage whispered from behind the door.

Glimmer couldn’t stop herself but laugh, hiding her face behind her hands, “Oh my god, you’re an _idiot_. Get out of there.”

Adora stuck her head out, grinning and Glimmer grabbed her wrist to pull the rest of her out into the room. It was strange how natural it felt- to interact with Adora, to grab her hand and laugh at her and with her and it was all very new but it was all very right. Once again, it struck Glimmer how quickly things had changed.

Adora clambered out of the closet and grinned at Glimmer, “So what’s up?”

“Oh, uh,” Glimmer ran her hands through her hair, “sometimes my mom will check on me and I think she’ll be pissed if she finds me sleeping with some strange girl.”

It took a second for what had come out of Glimmer’s mouth to second to sink into her brain, “Not like, ya know, _sleeping_ together- we just both happened to be asleep. Together. Not even that close. Just like in the same room.”

Adora wrinkled her eyebrows, “Didn’t I fall asleep basically in your lap?”

_Shit she remembers that? _

“Oh yeah- ha- guess you did,” Glimmer tried for a smile.

Adora returned it with a genuine one, full of smugness that made the blood rush to Glimmer’s face, “So we were pretty close?”

“Uh, yeah, that it pretty close again,” Glimmer prayed that her blush wasn’t showing through, “I mean- um, I guess we were pretty close, yeah?”

Adora was stepping forward, laughing like a chime on the wind, “Is that a question?”

“I don’t think so...”

“You don’t sound so sure,” Adora was right in front of her now, smile close-lipped but still as playful and bright as ever. She swung her arms around Glimmer, clasping her hands behind Glimmer’s neck. _Oh no no no no no no. _

Glimmer was a gay disaster and her thundering heart couldn’t handle this shit. She wondered vaguely if she could die from- well she didn’t know what this was, but it sure felt deadly. It suddenly struck Glimmer that Adora was _flirting_ with her, causing her to stare up at Adora with eyes filled with more terror than what was usually associated with someone attractive flirting with you.

Adora laughed and replaced her hands by her side before Glimmer’s mind could dissolve further into a tangle of short circuiting wires. Glimmer let out a sigh of relief but her heart sunk fast enough to make a splashing wave in her stomach. Adora’s hands were warm; warm enough to spread heat straight through Glimmer’s core. She looked up into Adora’s blue eyes, searching for answers in the mirth that swam there.

“Glimmer? Glimmer?” Adora’s face came back into focus wearing a grin, “You kinda spaced out there.”

Glimmer wished she could just stare into that blue forever without having to worry about anything else. But Adora was staring at her with a quirked eyebrow and confused smile, “Yeah sorry, just a bit out of it.”

Adora tilted her head to the side and let the ghost of her finger tips run along the side of Glimmer’s face. It made a shiver run down her spine and the breath in her throat glitch to a stop. This girl needed to _stop_ before Glimmer just completely lost control of all her functions, “Well I’ve gotten a lot more sleep than you; you should let yourself rest until we need to get up in the morning.”

“Yeah, uh, about that; how are you getting to school?” Glimmer breathed out the words but it still didn’t feel like her lungs were working.

“Cat’ll pick me up in the morning. She always does.”

“Oh, uh, right,” _Cat. Jeez, _it was always Cat wasn’t it? She had gotten so worried about blocking herself from Adora that she had forgotten that Cat would _actually_ keep Adora from her- physically.

“Don’t worry about me, though,” Adora’s grin beamed through Glimmer’s thoughts.

“I’m sorry, what?” _Damn, am I being that obvious?_ Glimmer shook her head slightly, hoping it could sort everything in her head to an easy little set of boxes that she had never been actually able to create, “Why would I worry about you? Like, heh, what would give you the impression that I was worried about you? I’m not worried about you!”

Adora’s face fell immediately and the small expression made something twist in Glimmer’s gut. It was nothing like the smug, (dare Glimmer hazard it) flirty smile she had held on seconds before, “Oh, uh, you seemed to get really worried when I said that and I just thought maybe it was because I’ll have to walk a ways to where I get picked up but I was wrong and I shouldn’t have just assumed that you’d be thinking about me. It was stupid-“

“No! It’s not that it’s just-“ Glimmer couldn’t stand the way Adora had turned her head to the side, eyes downcast and only daring to make eye contact for a second before breaking it off to examine the floor. Nah, it was Glimmer’s job to be an insecure loser.

“It’s just what?” Adora’s eyes flashed up and help steady with Glimmer’s for longer. There was that sadness in them that made Glimmer’s heart crumple like a soda can.

Glimmer deflated. She wasn’t ready to let Adora only to be told she was reading into everything way too far; she wasn’t ready to get hurt, “It’s nothing.”

Adora managed to complete her transformation into kicked puppy, forcing a sigh out of Glimmer.

She composed herself. She could lie, she did it all the time- Adora was no different. Except she _was_ different. Glimmer pushed the thought to the side and straightened like an actor preparing to step on stage, “I wasn’t worried about you because you can obviously take care of yourself so I have complete confidence in you.”

The effect was immediate, Adora’s face brightening like the sun breaking through clouds after a rain storm, “Oh, really?”

Glimmer raised her hand to cross a X across her chest and she was reminded of just how close they were, how little space there was between. But she had to continue, finish the act- for Adora and herself, “Yeah, really!”

It occurred to Glimmer that she was more or less doing exactly what she had accused Adora of. Just another thought for Glimmer to shoosh to the side, whispering that she had good intentions while she had thought Adora was just trying to recruit her... or whatever she had thought. It all seemed very far away now.

“Oh... ok,” Adora smiled and Glimmer could swear a lead jacket had fallen off her shoulders.

“So anyways,” Adora yawned, sentence broken by her never satisfied exhaustion, “What are we going to do about your mom or whatever? Do you, uh, do you want me to hide somewhere.”

She grimaced, glancing back at the closet she had climbed out of and Glimmer couldn’t stop herself from laughing, “I’m not going to force you sleep in the closet.”

Adora giggled, “Good- I’ve spent enough time in there.”

Glimmer laughed again before chewing her bottom lip and scratching the back of her head. She dragged the short, thick waves through her fingers as she spoke, “I think we could just share the bed again.”

“Won’t your mom see me?”

“If you take the wall side, I think it’ll be ok; she doesn’t really look too hard,” Glimmer set all her previous concerns aside to create new, fresher worries, her face scrunched up in thought. She had a lot to consider- mainly the fact that she and Adora had a tendency to get wrapped up in each other when they slept near each other and she wasn’t confident her pinning heart and divided mind could handle the inevitable situation. She wasn’t sure if she could stand to wrap her arms around this girl knowing she was never going to be able to do it again.

But Adora was already shuffling forward, Glimmer’s wrist held loosely in her curled fingers and Glimmer’s heart grasped firmly in her casual movements. Glimmer had noticed before the hypnotizing qualities of Adora’s signature ponytail that she wore to school everyday; she had never given herself the time to let herself wonder why she was so fascinated. Here though, she couldn’t help it. Adora moved like someone who knew exactly what they were doing- despite they fact that they were somewhat drunk. Her torso swayed from side to side far more than it usually did or probably should. It caused her loose hair to shift across her back like sand move from dune to dune.

Adora turned with a confused grin to face Glimmer and gave the wrist she was holding a small tug, “You planning on just standing there?”

“What?” Glimmer realized her feet had forgotten to move. She considered taking a step forward but wasn’t prepared to stand practically nose to nose with Adora- _again_.

“It’s like you never want to sleep,” Adora’s smile was real but so was the question beneath it.

“Oh, uh, I guess it’s just I’m not used to sharing a bed with someone,” It wasn’t really a lie. _It’s not that I don’t want to sleep; I just don’t want to do it next to you. _

Adora tilted her head the side, “You don’t like being in bed with someone?”

_What sort of question is that??_ Glimmer took the easy route, shrugging and hoping it was enough to throw the conversation back to Adora’s side.

Adora seemed to be thinking, eyes staring at something far away and a few inches left of Glimmer’s head. She was rubbing the pad of her thumb along where she was still holding Glimmer’s wrist, completing a semicircle from the soft inner side and back up to the top and back down again. Once, twice, three times, four. Glimmer knew it was just a compulsion as Adora thought, but the gentleness made her breath go feathery.

Finally Adora shared her grand conclusion, stopping the movement of her thumb- but not before Glimmer’s knees had given her an arched eyebrow sort of warning like _Ya know you can’t handle this sorta shit and we might give out soon_, “I like sleeping next to someone; it’s just cozier.”

Adora wrote off her words with a shrug but Glimmer could tell she really meant it, that she felt safer with someone sleeping by her side. It wasn’t Glimmer’s thing, but Adora obviously felt that way with her whole being.

“Ok,” Glimmer wasn’t sure what else she was supposed to say, “well, we should probably go to sleep if we want to be awake for any of our classes.”

Adora snorted and began moving again, Glimmer actually following this time, “God, don’t remind me of that. I am going to look _dead_ tomorrow or actually _today_ haha.”

Adora’s laugh was bitterly fake and it made Glimmer cringe internally, “Yeah I’m sorry about that.”

The girl had already thrown herself onto the bed, back to the wall and face turned up to look at Glimmer who was still standing. She looked confused again, with just a hint of incredulity, “Why would you be sorry? It’s Weaver’s stupid fault that we needed to stay up until god knows when to work on this stupid project.”

Glimmer laid down as Adora continued ranting, resting on her hip so she could watch Adora as she spoke.

“I just hate teachers who assume we don’t have any other classes or homework or- dare we even mention it- lives outside of school?!” Adora’s tone had risen while the volume had stayed the same.

She was quietly hissing her words out, spitting venom at the whole of the American education system, but her wide eyes stared at Glimmer with out any kind of ill will, simply looking for agreement.

Glimmer wanted to just give in, tell Adora that she was absolutely right (that wouldn’t be a lie) and she could listen to her rant for hours (also not a lie). She liked the passion sparking off Adora; she was always so contained and proper that this enraged, adorable fireball excited Glimmer. Because Glimmer could _work_ with that; Glimmer knew fire- she felt it everyday. But they both needed sleep and especially Adora, “You’re completely right and you should say it... just not right now. ‘Cause if you keep whisper yelling, neither of us are going to be able to get any more rest.”

Adora nodded, looking disappointed but conceding to Glimmer’s point, “Yeah, ok, you’re right. But we’ll have to take a rain check on this- I have whole essays about that shit.”

Glimmer huffed through her nose, “Of course you do; and you probably wrote them for fun.”

Adora lifted one shoulder, “Can’t deny that.”

“Well you can tell me about it some other time.”

“I’ll just start yelling at you from across the halls,” She grinned brightly and gave a playful wink, “I’m sure that’s exactly what you would want me to do.”

_She plans on talking to me at school..._ Butterflies were hosting a full on rave in Glimmer’s stomach. And that _wink_; she was actually going to kill Glimmer.

“Anyways, what time are you planning on getting up?”

Glimmer tried to shake off her blush without success, “Oh, we shouldn’t sleep in too long because my mom usually comes into my room in the morning to physically drag me out of bed.”

Adora laughed and Glimmer continued on, “Anyways, what time were you thinking about?”

Adora quirked her mouth to the side for a second to think, “Would six be ok?”

Glimmer checked her phone and set an alarm, “Sure, that’d give us a whole two hours and twenty minutes.”

Glimmer had spoken with a sarcastic tone but Adora nodded and seemed to get ready to fall asleep. She snuggled her side into the mattress, curling inwards but scooting towards Glimmer. Within a few seconds her breathing had fallen into a steady rhythm.

So Glimmer had no idea if Adora was actually aware of her actions when she reached out, placing her arm across Glimmer’s and pressing her hand into Glimmer’s back. It forced Glimmer to curl herself closer to Adora, but there was no force in it; Glimmer had melted at her touch.

She fell asleep counting Adora’s freckles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I’m posting this late asf because life has been a complete bitch lately... I am hoping to get the next chapter posted the 21st but that may not happen and I hope you understand :( 
> 
> In the meantime, though, comments and kudos are so appreciated and I love hearing your feedback!!  
Love you all 🖤✨


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bro idk ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not a lot to say about this chapter except that I hope you enjoy! Kudos, recs, and feedback are always appreciated and encouraged! (I love hearing your comments!)
> 
> I do have some announcements to make but I’ll put those on the end :)

Glimmer woke up to the chimes of her phone screaming somewhere and she really didn’t care where it was because she didn’t have any intention of moving to turn it off. It was six AM, soft sunlight was struggling to reach the bottom of Glimmer’s window, and everything around Glimmer was soft. And warm. And now it was moving and Glimmer cracked one eye open, glancing down at the pale arms wrapped around her waist. _Oh, right._

Adora made a muffled sound and tried to bury her face away from the alarm, simply digging her nose into Glimmer’s shoulder blade instead.

The reality of the situation hit Glimmer like a two ton truck speeding down a highway and straight into her gut. The _domesticity_ of it all, the way the warmth drifted from Adora’s closely pressed chest on Glimmer’s back, the way the sunlight glanced off Adora’s hands- gold on gold. It made her choke awake; literally, eyes snapping open as she shuddered out a cough that Adora could probably feel through her dreams.

She cleared her throat and shifted to lie on her back, wondering if it would make Adora let go; if anything, Adora’s arms only began squeezing tighter. In this position, it would’ve been natural for Glimmer to stare up at the ceiling but she felt her eyes keep drifting towards Adora. Her face was once more uncreased, relaxed in her own personal pool of early morning light. A sheer veil of blond hair flitted across the bridge of her nose, moving slightly as she breathed. Adora’s arms felt secure as their steady pressure wove its way around Glimmer’s stomach. It felt safe, a lifeline tied around her waist and grounding her to how real everything was. She really couldn’t believe any of the past 12 hours, but the weight across her side and the hands clasped loosely right where she could hesitantly place her own over them- lightly, of course, just in case she needed to remove it any given moment- well, it at least gave her a sensation to cling onto. Something undeniable.

The alarm had given up while waiting for Glimmer’s pining ass to get its shit together but started screaming again to remind her that she actually had things to do. This time, Adora began to stir and Glimmer hurriedly moved her hand from Adoras’ and turned the chimes off for good.

Adora sat up, bleary eyes staring straight ahead. The sudden movement of Adora jerking away jarred Glimmer into a deceptive appearance of alertness. She blinked up at Adora who to continued to where a dazed expression for a few seconds until she seemed to suddenly flicker to life.

“Time to go then?” The coldness of Adora’s tone was early as alien as the scowl stretching across her face.

“Um, yeah I guess so,” Glimmer ran her hands through hair and knew it wasn’t looking the best, managing to be flattened and frizzy at the same time. Sometimes Glimmer reminded herself of a bright pink lollipop that had been left out on the counter. As her hands made their way through the somewhat greasy waves, she let the pads of her fingertips press through to her scalp and held the strands between her knuckles for a second longer than she should have. She hoped the sharp tugging sensation and dull rub of her fingers would help wake her brain up enough to avoid making a complete idiot of herself in front of Adora.

That option flew out the window when Adora turned to look at her, scowl dropping and melting into a soft smile, “Morning.”

“Morning?” The molten quality Adora’s expression would have been startling enough if she hadn’t been wearing its opposite only a second before.

“Sorry about that- I tend to wake up kinda fuzzy and, er, weird,” Adora seemed to read Glimmer’s mind- either that or her expression was just that obvious. Adora was waving her hands around her head to illustrate her point and grinning like an idiot.

“Apparently you also wake up five times more stupid than you usually are,” Glimmer grinned before realizing it could come across as flirting and- _nope, nope, nope, we are not doing that_. Glimmer flopped backwards onto the highly inviting pillows behind her. Adora smiled at her and Glimmer was sure something inside of her was overheating- maybe some sort of little laptop fan whirring away inside of her just a little too quickly.

Adora feigned over exaggerated offensive, slamming her hand against her chest and letting her mouth drop open, “You say that as if I’m not always stupid??” 

“Oh no, you are. Just especially in the morning and at around two AM.” 

“So…” Adora glanced away with another sudden, jerky movement, “I should probably get going soon if you want me to avoid your mom.”

“Um, yeah right- right, of course,” Glimmer was still internally sleeping. She sat up again but her head was full of cotton.

Adora pulled her phone out of her pocket and Glimmer realized she hadn’t seen Adora use it the entire time. A picture flashed up on the screen as Adora pressed her thumb down to unlock it. It was a selfie and Cat- a frozen moment of Cat cackling into the camera, Adora only a little to the right with her eyes squeezed shut as she laughed. It made Glimmer cringe inside, knowing she could never have that.

Glimmer flicked her eyes away, pretending she hadn’t been staring at Adora’s screen. Little clicks sounded as Adora tapped her thumbs rapidly across the keyboard. It was obvious she was texting someone and Glimmer didn’t want to seem like a creep just watching her.

She pulled out her own phone and stared at the bright images without actually taking in what any of them were. Because how could she? How could she be thinking about anything at all right now as Adora- the girl she had hated for months- sat right next to her like they were nine year olds who had just woken up at a sleepover. And the worst part was, she didn’t hate her anymore- in fact, she kind of liked her. She was funny and smart and kind and pretty... maybe Glimmer had been hypnotized by her, tricked into liking her just as the rest of her school had been, but she welcomed the mesmerization. Glimmer knew, deep down, that she had no chance with Adora even as friends but... Glimmer’s heart was sold even as it broke.

Adora turned and Glimmer’s head flicked up in her direction probably too quickly. She told herself to stop acting like a weirdo and to just behave like normal except this wasn’t normal and she had no idea what was going on. She was torn- but then again, when wasn’t she? If this was going to be her last interaction with Adora this way- this relaxed and beautiful and real and perfect way- she wanted to be able to remember the conversation without cringing. But of course, there was a desperate monstrosity that dragged itself from a place Glimmer had never acknowledged before; because she didn’t want to let this feeling go, didn’t want to let Adora go. The person Adora simply _was _made Glimmer different; made her a happier version of herself. Adora made Glimmer feel more comfortable in herself- something that very few people had ever accomplished. But it was more than just that; the version of Adora that was sitting next to her was flawed and genuine and so different from what Glimmer saw at school. She had been right- Adora did wear a mask at school but the kindness was real, it was the chips and dents that were hidden. They were chips and dents that Glimmer was beginning to grow highly fond of. She liked to think that this was Her Adora, that Adora only crawled out of her glossy, perfect shell when she was around Glimmer. She knew it was ridiculous and completely unrealistic, but she held on to the notion with a clenched fist.

She breathed in Adora only inches away and it felt like she was breathing in a Van Gogh painting. Adora smelled like sweet grass, swirling stars, warm cream, soft earth. She also smelled like a greasy teenager but Glimmer wasn’t going to admit that while she tried to capture her perfect moment. Her eyes soaked Adora in as she sat there in all her soft, warm, paint covered magnificence. Adora’s hair was far heavier looking than usual as she reached up and tied it back. Her shirt showed the signs of a worn out and overly used article of clothing. Her skin looked oily and her face was framed by clay and contoured by paint. Glimmer wished she wasn’t obsessed with those stupid features in front of her.

Adora was talking and Glimmer forced herself to concentrate on the words- not the moving lips, “Cat’s gonna pick me up down the street in a few minutes. That’s ok, right?”

Glimmer swallowed thickly because in her head a voice was saying _No, please don’t go. Please don’t leave. Please_\- “Yeah sure. That’s fine- do whatever you want.”

Adora nodded slowly like she was mulling over something. Glimmer’s hands fidgeted in her lap as she waited for the other girl to speak, watching with big eyes.

When she finally spoke it was with an anticlimactic, “Hey, I’m going to use the bathroom before your mom comes in, ok?”

Glimmer let her head tilt up and down numbly, lost in her own her own thoughts. The spell was broken; she could no longer watch in a honey-glazed stupor. That would mean getting hurt when Adora left and if there was one thing her brain was good at, it was telling her not to get hurt- even if the walls she built as a result made her feel ripped apart.

Adora got up silently and picked her way through the wreckage of art supplies sprawled across Glimmer’s floor. Glimmer remembered with a grumbling sigh that she still had to finish wiring the model together.

Once Adora had ghosted out of the room and carefully clicked the door shut behind her,Glimmer clambered out of still highly welcoming sheets of her bed. She stretched, hoping the movement would clear the fog out her mind as well as the stiffness of her body. Of course, it did little to improve her situation and she shuffled over to the tangle of wire, muttering all the way over.

She plopped herself down on the ground and got to work. It was easy- the type of mindless, repetitive movement that let Glimmer space out while she worked and she got finished just as Adora slipped back into the room.

Adora walked over to Glimmer, standing close enough for Glimmer to feel her presence in her space without actually seeing her. It was a sort of pressure, pressing from the outside on Glimmer from Adora’s proximity. Or made the pressure was growing from inside? Either way, it made Glimmer grit her teeth and wish Adora would move.

She could feel Adora’s smile encroaching on the edges of her consciousness before she heard it, “That turned out so great!”

Glimmer acknowledged Adora’s voice with a noncommittal grunt. 

“The best part is definitely your paint job,” Adora gave Glimmer’s side a light nudge with her foot and Glimmer didn’t know why the contact made her clench her fists, “This will definitely help you get your grades up!”

“Since when are my grades any of your business?!” Glimmer snapped, immediately regretting the harshness of her voice.

Adora stepped back slightly, voice small when she spoke, “Oh right, sorry.”

Glimmer hung her head. She didn’t know what the hell was going on inside of there, “No, look- I’m sorry.”

“No it’s ok, you’re right. I’m sorry.”

“Adora- stop!” Glimmer spun around, “Look, I’ve been a bitch to you for long time and I didn’t even have a good reason. Just let me apologize- just once.”

Adora looked down at the ground, gaze shifting across the floor from one side of her feet to the other before finally stopping the movement to look at Glimmer. She gave a timid smile, “Apology accepted then.”

Glimmer nodded as if she were satisfied but the shift in her head was making her uncomfortable. She wondered what Factory Setting switch had been flipped on inside of her, reverting her reactions to Adora to exactly where the had been before... before everything. The feelings of disgust and dislike were so automatic, it made her feel powerless- no control over her most basic thoughts. Glimmer hated it but that just added to quickly rising levels of animosity that writhed in her body.

Adora sat down next to Glimmer, still quiet. She seemed hesitant as she shifted closer to her, then back away again; seemingly afraid to even make eye contact. Glimmer could feel the discomfort edging onto herself and it made her blood boil. She was already feeling weird, she didn’t need Adora adding to that.

“Can I help you?” Glimmer gave a disgruntled sigh, “Is something wrong? Did I do something wrong?”

Why is she acting so strange? Did I do something in my sleep or... say something? If Glimmer was in a cartoon, an over exaggerated sweat drop would have been forming along the edge of her brow.

Adora ran her bottom lip under the edge of her teeth, “I just wanted to say about last night- or, rather, this morning- I know I was acting weird and I’m sorry. I crossed boundaries that I shouldn’t have and I’m sorry and I’m sure I made you uncomfortable.”

Glimmer blinked up from where she had been uselessly fiddling with a some random piece of the model- Does she think I’m mad at her?

“It’s ok- it wasn’t too weird,” Glimmer couldn’t contain the smirk that slid across her face, “You’re kinda funny when you’re loopy.”

Adora blushed pink, “Oh, yeah, um that’s something I do. I probably should have told you that but I didn’t think we would be up so late. I honestly didn’t think I was going to stay the night.”

Glimmer studied the red spreading across Adora’s cheeks, trying to find its cause. Did Adora really think that after all the dumb things Glimmer had done, all the stupid breakdowns she had fallen into in just the past 24 hours- did Adora really think that after all that, Glimmer would really judge her for making some dorky jokes and getting a little clingy? Ok so she had gotten really clingy but it’s not like Glimmer could really complain. Glimmer had never been cooed over and had never been snuggled up against by anyone like the way Adora had simply wrapped and draped herself over Glimmer that early morning. And Glimmer was never going to flirt with her- she was probably never going to flirt with anyone- so she held onto the memory fondly.

She didn’t want Adora to think she disliked the contact and the smirks and the winks; she would’ve loved to encourage it if she could, but that would give her away. She couldn’t seem too eager, couldn’t simply say _Oh yes, Adora, I love you hugging me and holding my hands and giving me that smug look that makes my toes curl and heat bubble comfortably my stomach. _

So she nodded with the most sagely expression she thought she could muster, “It’s ok, though. I really didn’t mind.”

_Shit._ Well there goes Glimmer’s plan of Not Acting Like a Desperate Weirdo.

Adora’s brow creased together and Glimmer officiated the fact that she had screwed up. Adora remained silent for at least a minute, rocking her knee back and forth like a pendulum- towards Glimmer, away from Glimmer. Shifting sharply from side to side just like Glimmer’s thoughts- _This is horrible, I never should have talked to her_ swinging all the way to _She’s sweet and kind, stop pushing her away. She makes you happy so there’s really nothing to regret, right?_ Glimmer grimaced into the silence between them, watching Adora from the corner of her eye as they both stubbornly remained lost in thought.

After an eternity of 60 seconds, Adora stood up with a stiffness that didn’t fit her grace and brushed off the front of her shorts without any real purpose in the movement, “Well, I should probably get going now.”

Adora stood standing there for another moment and Glimmer knew from the way she swung her hands back and forth that she was waiting for Glimmer to say something.

Glimmer tapped her finger tips along her thigh, wishing she could reverse time and bring it spinning back to the darkness of four AM where Adora’s laugh ran through her room and through her mind. She wished Adora’s head rested on her lap instead of her sweaty palms that she pressed into her leg. She wished her mind was filled with fuzzy, blissful exhaustion instead of the growing darkness of negativity that was filtering its way through her thoughts.

Glimmer rubbed her eyes and tried to return to the present situation, “Yeah, ok.”

Adora nodded again like she was coming to terms with some grave news; the hateful little voice in Glimmer’s mind slipped past the gates she had spent last night struggling to build and it whispered to her about what an annoyingly strange person Adora was.

Glimmer glared down at the floor as Adora flit her way to the door frame. Again the yearning came rushing in, the wish that she could fight nagging advocate in her head. She set her jaw and spoke with a tone that struck even her as brutally flat, “Hey you- be careful.”

When Glimmer hazarded a glance over at Adora, the girl was smiling at her and it made something Glimmer hadn’t even been aware stop its frantic fluttering around Glimmer’s rib cage and settle finally.

“See you at school?” Adora sounded like she was asking for permission.

Glimmer gave Adora a small smile, “Yeah, see you.”

Adora moved past the door frame but froze suddenly, pausing to turn and look back at Glimmer as her face broke into a beaming grin. She gave a tiny wave before disappearing down the hall in a prancing jog.

Glimmer sighed at the empty space Adora had filled only seconds before. Her room resembled the wreckage of a natural disaster but she couldn’t describe it as anything but empty with Adora missing.

Glimmer looked past her blinds into the gray fog that had moved to fill the sky but as she remembered the last smile Adora had given her, she could swear the sun was still shining.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok announcement time: I am going to be taking a break from this fic for about a month. I will still be active on tumblr @starlightinhumanform so feel free to come hang out with me (I love talking to you guys!!) but I will not be updating this. 
> 
> This fic is NOT over and I am NOT abandoning it. 
> 
> So why am I doing this? I have a lot going on right now and all that has made me very busy (I kind of threw this chapter together while I was supposed to be sleeping so I'm sorry if it feels rough-around-the-edges); this situation has also been affecting my mental health and I do not want to give you anything that isn’t my best. I often feel that if I write stuff while in an unstable place, it tends to carry that same unhealthy energy and tone and I don’t want to spread any of that to you guys. 
> 
> My plan: All of September I want to work on a short story (A City Bleeding) and hopefully get it published through a writing contest. I want to give it my all because there’s a lot at stake. November I will be back to The Art of Love; my hope is to get it completely finished during that month. 
> 
> Until then, take all my love. You are all amazing and your positivity and encouragement mean so much to me. 🖤✨


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s real Weaver hating hours  
Also Bow and Glimmer are best friend culture

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sup kids  
I’m back! And god I didn’t realize how much I enjoy writing this fic until I took a break from it. I’m so excited to be working on it again and sharing my love of glimadora with you amazing people. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy my dears~

Glimmer’s feet shuffled on the laminate tiles as she dragged herself to fourth period. She could tell by the quickly thinning crowd that the passing period was almost over. She couldn’t bring herself to move faster- or to actually care. She had fallen asleep in her last period and had been forced to scribble down the half an hour of notes she had missed in the last three minutes of class- and then a minute or two of passing after that.

Her mind was a fog and the only lamp that occasionally shone through the dense clouds was a grumble of frustration. Glimmer couldn’t decide if she should blame her sleep deprivation on Ms Weaver or if it was better to somehow twist the situation onto Adora. Her brain suggested the third option of it being her damn fault for being so distracted the whole night and spending so much time on being a drama queen instead of actually doing work.

Glimmer let out a huff as the bell screeched. She glared at the door down the hall, behind which Weaver was almost surely cackling out some Disney villain laugh as she marked Glimmer late.

A large part of her was highly tempted to turn around and spend the entire period lurking in a corner of the art studio. She had dropped off the model that morning (By some miracle, Weaver hadn’t been there) so Adora could still present it and get points for them.

She stopped walking and tapped her fingers against her thigh. It was only a ten foot walk to the class but, _god, at what cost? _

She was jarred into movement by a security guard speeding past her on a bicycle. He was shouting at the empty hallway- something about, “COME ON PEOPLE, KEEP MOVING,”- as if he were policing Times Square and not just Glimmer as she slouched her way past the empty row of monotonous doors.

Glimmer huffed and sludged forward, pausing to glare at the disappearing guard before wrenching the door open.

“Glimmer you’re-“

“Late, I know,” she grumbled the inevitable end of Weaver’s sentence.

Glimmer could feel Weaver’s raised eyebrow without even looking up.

“Keep doing this and you’ll get-“

“Detention. _I know._”

The other students were watching the exchange like they were waiting for a bomb to go off- tick tock tick tock. Glimmer was sure that if it were just her and Weaver, the woman may have actually lost it and begun screaming at her.

She settled into her seat, resolved not to let Weaver bother her today. She was too tired to give a shit.

Weaver paused before conceding to simply shake her head and move towards the middle of the room.

Glimmer hazarded a glance upward only to see Weaver surveying the room with a wicked grin, hands pressed together like a praying mans’; as if she was showing off the wicked red claws of her nails. It made Glimmer sick.

“So class, I have a surprise for you,” Smug, purred, smooth with jagged edges; Weaver reminded Glimmer of obsidian as the woman soaked in the sounds of hopelessness coming from her students, “I’ll be checking your projects today to see what you have done!”

The class groaned in unison and the girl in front of Glimmer began whisper yelling at her partner across the room- as if that could do them any good now. Glimmer would have rolled her eyes if they didn’t feel so heavy.

“I know, it isn’t wonderful?!” Weaver’s shark-toothed grin widened as she acknowledged her doomed class.

Glimmer felt bad for the kids in the room who didn’t have a hyperactive, annoyingly insistent partner who had in on Weaver’s evil plans- so basically everyone else.

Now that Glimmer was thinking about it, she hadn’t seen said ball of energy when she had walked in. She turned and was surprised to see Adora’s seat glaringly empty. Glimmer fought back against the wave of disappointment that hit her. It’s not like this was a completely bad thing- it meant that Glimmer would actually be able to concentrate. And Weaver would be more likely to give Glimmer credit for her work instead of immediately assuming Adora had done all of it. So yeah, it was all good. Except… _She said she’d see me at school… _

Glimmer internally sighed at her own pathetic foolishness; she was getting way too _soft_.

She allowed herself another glance back, as if Adora would’ve suddenly appeared there in the three second break between her stares.

Another wave hit her, this time a cascade of apprehension. Adora was not the type to skip class and Glimmer’s mind was quick to fill the fog in her head with worries. _What if something happened to her? What if she passed out? What if she passed out because I kept her up all night? What if she got hit by a car? What if _I_ hit her my car?? Wait no… I don’t have a car. But what if she’s trying to avoid me? _

Glimmer’s mind slapped its hand down on a proverbial bell- _Yep! She’s try to avoid you! _

Glimmer could feel the sensation of sickness growing in her stomach and rising to her chest. She wanted to bury her had in her hand as a stupid emotional groan began clawing its way up her vocal cords.

“Hey, Glimmer,” A snarky voice purred above her.

Glimmer growled as she looked up into Cat’s smirk, “What do you want?”

Cat gave an over the top pout, complete with big eyes and crinkled forehead, “Why, I just wanted to make sure you were ok.”

“I’m fine; leave me the hell alone,” Glimmer spat.

“All right, all right. You just looked a little,” Cat waggled her fingers, which only added to the insult of her airy, pretentious voice, “dazed-out there.”

Glimmer was suddenly aware of the movement around her- nearly everyone was already sat down with their partners or were at least taking a seat as she looked around.

“Also, I kinda need that seat,” Cat wrinkled her nose at Glimmer and pointed at the chair she was in.

Glimmer turned her head and to the side to see Cat’s partner Scylar beaming at her. Scy was a tall-ass wrestler with a loud punk style; if Glimmer’s brain was dazed enough to somehow skip over Scy throwing herself in the seat next to her (the girl never did anything without enthusiasm), then Glimmer had to be _really_ out of it.

She stumbled out of her chair to move out of the way, “Oh right… I’ll just- move to the back then, I guess.”

Cat waggled her fingers in a wave as she slipped gracefully into Glimmer’s chair, “See ya later.”

Glimmer blinked at the girl for a second before realizing she had froze again. She took a step back, just trying to remember how to move. _See ya later… see ya. See ya. _

The words bounced around in her head like the little metal ball in a pinball machine- _dink, dink, dink_. Every time they hit the walls of her skull, I knew conspiracy dawned upon her. _What if she knows that Adora was with me last night? Dink. What if she’s trying to get revenge? Dink. What if she told Adora not to come to class? Dink. What if Cat knows I, well that I, you know, abut, you know, Adora. _The thought made a little _ding_! sound this time before ricocheting back even stronger. 

“Uh, Glimmer?” The arch in Weaver’s eyebrow was sharp enough to cut a steak with.

She blinked again, bringing her eyes into focus. She had made her way to the back of the classroom but had failed to actually take a seat. Looking around, the seemingly the entire room had eyes on her. Her face burned and she lowered herself into the nearest seat. Adora’s seat.

Adora should have been there; Glimmer _needed_ Adora to be there. Glimmer felt pathetic in every sense of the word. Only a few days ago, she had wanted to keep as much distance between her and Adora as possible. And now she was useless without her. It was strange and it was wrong and it shouldn’t have been happening but there she was, simmering within herself as the class moved forward without her. She needed the assurance that letting Adora in was the right thing to do, that she hadn’t scared Adora off. She needed the simple hope that Adora didn’t hate her. _Why shouldn’t she? You hated her for months; you called her a lair and a fake. Why shouldn’t she hate you? _

Glimmer resisted the urge to grumble at herself to shut up. Sometimes her brain really did deserve to be yelled at, though.

The class was moving again, sifting through the maze of chairs to grab their projects. Glimmer followed suit as best as she could to meld into the crowd this time after the embarrassing space-out that had happened only a couple minutes before.

_Ok but consider this._ Glimmer rolled her eyes internally as her mind began rambling again. _What if she does hate you- so what? You _thought_ that she hated you for a long-ass time; why does it matter so much if she actually does now? It honestly might be a good thing. It’ll help you get over that stupid crush. _

She kept moving forward, trying to ignore the words floating around in her head but it was so much easier just to argue back. Was she just adding to the noise? Yes. Was it satisfying to tell the devil in her ear that it was an idiot? Oh definitely. _Consider this- you’re the one that’s so obsessed with Adora and maybe if you stopped worrying about her for a second, I could find something else for you to yell at me about for no good reason. _

It struck Glimmer just how much Adora had taken over her life; she had spent the whole day thinking and worrying about the girl. She was just a crush after all; it was ridiculous. Ok so Glimmer thought she was gorgeous and funny and smart and definitely the weirdest person she had ever met but in the best way possible? It was crazy to get this obsessed. Glimmer took a deep breath as she lifted her model off the counter, resolved to relax and go about this whole situation like a “normal” person. One problem. She had never crushed this hard on someone before. She had no idea how to act.

She settled back into her seat-_ Yes, it was her seat; Adora wasn’t here right now and that meant her seat rights were revoked._ Glimmer snorted at her sleep-deprived mind as it continued to crack into smaller and increasingly hysterical pieces.

Glancing around, it was clear that the rest of the room was occupied. Weaver was stalking from partner to partner, leering over each of her victims with the sadistic joy that only a high school science teacher could possibly possess. The groups that weren’t being judged were either trying to throw together styrofoam balls or were praying. Glimmer was pretty sure that neither of those would help at that point.

Glimmer decided to take advantage of the surrounding chaos and grabbed her phone from the pocket of her backpack. She opened her conversation to Bow, ready to dump all her problems in her messages and hope she wasn’t blowing up his phone in middle of a test. Oh well, that’s a problem she could deal with later-

_Hey hey hey. Ok so I’ve a problem _

_Well more like a question. But it’s questions about a problem _

**…hi? What’s going on lmao **

**You haven’t texted me since you sent me that weirdass text at like two in the morning **

**What were you even doing up then?? **

_Oh good you are here ;) _

_What do you mean?? You were up too loser?? _

**Oh my god just tell me what your ~problem~ is **

_Ok um sooooo_

**Yes?**

_SOOOOO _

**YES **

**WHAT **

Glimmer moved a hand over her mouth to muffle the giggles that were escaping. Bow’s dramatics always made her laugh and she happened to be uncharacteristically bashful about this certain topic.

_So I kinda have a big fat crush _

The giggles disappeared very suddenly and Glimmer dug her teeth into her bottom lip as she watched the little blinking dots march in their message bubble, waiting for Bow’s response. Fortunately, he didn’t take long to reply. Unfortunately, Glimmer didn’t quite like his answer.

**Is it Adora? **

_Dfydfgdgthkl how?? _

**Look no one hates someone for no reason as much as you hated adora UNLESS you actually love them **

Ok so Bow had a point and _maybe_ he was right and she should have realized it earlier, but “love” was taking it several steps too far.

**Also that text you sent last night was so lovestruck I could practically see the hearts in your eyes **

_I literally just said it turned out ok that you gave her my number?? Because YOU were freaking out?? _

**Yes but you said it with love <3 <3 <3 **

_I hate you _

_And it’s NOT love. I just like her_

**Sure… **

Glimmer very nearly put her phone away with a huff before remembering that she actually had a reason for texting Bow to begin with.

_Shut up, anyways do you know where Adora is? _

**Ooo you missing your girlfriend?**

Glimmer’s face would’ve burned red even if Bow hadn’t taken the low dig and called Adora her girlfriend. Because that was the dream, right? Because that’s exactly what she wanted but what she could never have. Because Bow didn’t know the ache in her chest, the pain he was causing. Because he was her best friend so he should know what was going on and how much everything had changed. Because she just wanted to tell him everything and ask him what the hell she should do, but there was something keeping her from telling him and maybe if she could just ask for help, she would know how to solve all her problems. And because yes, she missed Adora and the feeling was so much stronger than it should’ve been.

She glanced around herself, positive that someone had seen her face glowing as bright as a stop light. Everyone was preoccupied with their various crises, leaving Glimmer to her own in peace. Unfortunately Weaver was only two rows away and was drawing closer and closer to where Glimmer sat slumped. She would have to finish up her conversation quickly then.

_I’m just wondering why she isn’t in class ok? Nothing more _

_If you don’t know then I’ll find someone else to ask _

**Jeez ok**

**Glim I’m sorry for teasing you **

**But no I don’t know where she is. Sorry :/ **

_Yeah ok. Ttyl my dude _

Glimmer let a puff of air escape slowly from her nose as she zipped her phone into its pocket. Her head felt like a bag of bricks tied to the end of her neck, her eyes just as heavy. She was slumped severely in the chair, so low that her shoulder blades were pressing into the middle of the seat and if she scooted forward a couple more inches, she’d probably slip off entirely; the idea of how much her mother would disapprove of her posture almost drew a laugh from Glimmer.

She debated whether or not it was worth it was worth it to fall asleep. Weaver would be standing over her, glaring with disgust in only two minutes or so, and she would therefore be risking whatever humiliation that would come with Weaver’s disgust. But, _mmmm_, two minutes of sleep? That might be worth it.

Glimmer was just shifting to plant her head on the desk when the classroom door exploded open. In the doorway stood a slightly sweaty Adora beaming, as always, as if she herself were the sun.

All eyes flickered over to her simultaneously, staring with confused and maybe amused expressions. Adora just grinned wider, apparently in response, “Hey everyone!”

Weaver stood up straight, freezing to look Adora up and down. She seemed confused as to what to do next. The girl continued to stand in the doorway for a moment, seemingly completely comfortable in the situation. The edges of her ponytail were frayed with baby hairs sticking up at odd angles that framed her reddened face. Her breathing was heavier than usual and the blades of glass plastered up her legs combined to give the impression that she had come directly from running.

Adora strode forward, “Sorry I was late! Soccer event with all the captains!”

_So Cat _did_ know where she was. _

“Oh, I guess that’s ok then,” Weaver unfroze but still seemed somewhat unsure as she turned back to what she had been doing before Adora had burst in.

Adora made her way to the back, stopping only to give Cat a small wave, and sat down next to Glimmer. Her eyes were sparkling and the only signs of any sort of sleep deprivation were the dark circles that contrasted sharply with her pale skin tone. Her energy level was no reflection the amount of sleep Glimmer knew she _hadn’t_ gotten

“Hi!”

“…hi?” Glimmer really wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say. That was usual. What was unusual was that Adora seemed to be expecting her to say something.

Adora was sitting next to her and just a minute ago, Glimmer would have sworn that’s exactly what she wanted but now she had doubts. Adora was just so loud. Her energy made white noise roar in Glimmer’s head and her voice thundered in the empty space between Glimmer’s thoughts. And her smile, god her smile, it was the brightest thing Glimmer had seen all day and it made her eye smart; it felt like a hand had gripped the bottom of her heart and was pulling it down, stretching out of shape and digging crescent nail marks into the flesh. That smile was all that she wanted and all that couldn’t live up to.

Adora cocked her head to the side and let the smile drop slightly, looking more like a puppy than ever, “Is something wrong?”

Glimmer shook her head and took the easy option, “Nah I’m just tired.”

“Oh ok,” Adora seemed to debate on something for a second before regaining her grin, “Me too honestly.”

It managed to draw a snort from Glimmer, “Really? I could not tell by the way you came bouncing in here.”

“I had like, way too much sugar. Anyways, what’s going on?” She turned her head from side to side to look around the room and causing her long ponytail to whip in either direction with the momentum.

Glimmer sat up from where she had ducked down to avoid Adora’s weaponized hair, “You were right. Weaver’s going around checking all our projects.”

Adora pumped her fist, moving her elbow towards her body and dramatically sweeping her head forward, eyes closed, as she did. It was undeniably dorky and it was undeniably _cute_.

“And our project is _great_,” Adora stared down at the pile of wire and clay that was beginning to look to Glimmer more and more like some strange “aesthetic” torture tool used by a Pinterest girl the 15th century. Of course, Adora was looking at it with the same starry-eyed expression that she always wore when looking at Glimmer’s art.

Glimmer shrugged, “It’s ok, I guess.”

Adora feigned offense, “Excuse me, I put my heart and soul into that clay.”

Glimmer couldn’t help but break down into giggles. She was so tired and Adora was so dumb and Glimmer couldn’t exactly explain why but every joke Adora cracked became the funniest thing she had ever heard.

Adora grinned back at her, “But really, you should give yourself more credit. It turned out great and I know that it’s not thanks to me.”

_Ugh, of course she had to go and make it all “wholesome.”_ Glimmer debated if it was worth it to say something back. It would be so much easier just to brush it off; so much safer. She had already crossed too many lines last night, the only solution was to go back to normal today. But she couldn’t even remember what normal was.

Glimmer glanced down at her hands. She had been unconsciously worrying at her nails and now her cuticles were beginning to turn red. She looked back up at Adora, “Look though… I wouldn’t have been able to get it done without you and I’m actually really glad you insisted on coming over.”

Adora smiled with the brightness and warmth of the sun, “I am too.”

Glimmer was in the process of absolutely melting under Adora’s affections when Weaver stalked to a halt in front of them, effectively freezing her back together, “So, Adora how did it turn out?”

Glimmer turned to Adora, watching her eyebrows scrunch together as confusion slowly drew across her face, “Well Glimmer did most of the work…”

Glimmer was beginning to wonder if this ‘innocent curiosity’ was something Adora put on just for Weaver. She wasn’t stupid, she certainly didn’t actually like Weaver and she _had_ to know that there was something going on between her and Glimmer.

“…so why don’t you talk to her about it?”

The end of Adora’s sentence snapped Glimmer sputtering out of her thoughts, “Wait what? No, sorry?”

Weaver pivoted on her heels to face Glimmer, “Well then, what do you have to say?”

Glimmer glanced at Adora with wide eyes trying to convey the message of _What the hell? Why would you do this?? _

Adora gave an encouraging smile and nodded. _Very helpful. _

“Um well,” Glimmer dragged her eyes from Adora (who was still giving that somewhat infuriating smile) to Weaver, “It’s a model of bismuth. The particles or painted to look like a sample of bismuth. That’s about it.”

“Very well then,” Weaver sniffed and began leering over the mess of purples and grays.

Glimmer could have sworn Weaver hadn’t been that critically focused on other groups but, then again, she hadn’t really paid much attention to what Weaver had been doing until moments ago.

Weaver continued to glare over the project as Glimmer continued to hold her breath. After far too long, Weaver moved away with nothing more than a “humph.”

As the _click click_ of Weaver’s heels moved to the other side of the room, Glimmer deflated into her normal slump, “I swear she hates me.”

Adora squinted in the direction of their teacher, “I still don’t see why she’s such a bitch to you.”

Glimmer’s eyebrows shot up without her consultation, “I was not expecting you to say anything that… strong.”

Adora shrugged without giving a response, still grimacing towards Weaver- whatever that meant. If it meant anything at all. Maybe it didn’t. Maybe Glimmer was just taking a simple stare to mean way too much. After all, Adora was sleep deprived and apparently coming down from a sugar high. It would make perfect sense for her to space out. So that settled it; Glimmer was reading into too much, that’s all-

“I swear one of these days she’s going to say something shitty to you, and I’m just going to lose it.”

_Oh_. Glimmer could feel her heart rate spike like it was trying to reach the sky. That sounded nice, that sounded like maybe- just maybe- Glimmer wasn’t reading into it too much. It sounded almost protective and normally that would make Glimmer gag, but somehow this wasn’t normal.

But of course her only reply was to let out a nervous wheeze, “Why on Earth would you do that??”

Adora shrugged again, “I don’t like the way she treats you.”

Glimmer didn’t like the strength in Adora’s eyes. It wasn’t the level of contempt that led to bloodshed, but it was certainly more emotion than Glimmer deserved or would ever ask for. It made her uncomfortable; she didn’t understand why Adora would be so angry about something which, in the long run, probably wouldn’t matter.

She gave another awkward giggle, “It really isn’t a big deal.”

Adora opened her mouth to respond and Glimmer was almost grateful when Weaver began speaking from in front of her desk. Something seemed to switch off in Adora, her expression relaxing as she turned to face the front of the room.

“I can’t say I’m surprised but a lot of you really need to get to work,” Weaver hissed out a _tsk_ noise between her teeth, “You only have a few days left to get this project done. You have about fifteen minutes left in this period and I expect you all to be focused that entire time. All right get to work.”

The class dissolved into noise as chairs were scrapped across the floor and notebooks were grabbed with the fevered terror that can only be inspired by a looming due date.

Adora reached across the desk to open one of the class-set laptops. She brought up the presentation she had been working on yesterday, the same pastel rainbows and soft pink theme. It sparked a strange sort of déjà vu in Glimmer, the exact same situation as yesterday but with so much less hostility. The dissonance was enough to make her head spin, but she couldn’t help but enjoy the difference.

Adora turned her head, mirth poorly concealed in her smirk, “Can I help you?”

Glimmer blinked quickly, suddenly aware that she had spaced out staring at at Adora, “Oh, um, sorry, no. I was just- no I’m fine.”

“You sure?” Adora was very obviously struggling to keep her smirk from dissolving into a full smile. People talk a lot about feeling butterflies in their stomachs but to Glimmer it felt more like a hundred tiny grasshoppers jumping out of time with one another.

She swallowed but her mouth had gone dry and she wasn’t sure when that happened. She tried to piece together a sentence that a normal human would say, “Yeah, um, I’m good. But what about you? Ya know, do you need help with the project or, uh, something?”

Adora seemed to pause for a moment, once again having to switch to a different setting. She looked almost disappointed and Glimmer still didn’t have any idea what was going on.

Then Adora’s face did something else Glimmer was not at all expecting. Her expression lost all of the playful cockiness it had held only a second before, shifting into what Glimmer could only describe as timid- maybe even embarrassed, “Um, yeah, actually. Could you draw some more things for me to use in the presentation?”

Glimmer didn’t understand Adora’s apparent discomfort. She flipped open a sketch book and grabbed a pencil, “Sure; what do you need?”

“Just another a sketch of it unprocessed or something like that would be great!”

Glimmer was beginning to learn that Adora’s stupid sunshine smile was somehow even warmer when you knew you were the one that had caused it.

The next few minutes went by quickly. They sat mostly in silence, both content in their own work. Sometimes Glimmer would glance over, catching Adora staring at what she had been drawing. Every time she did, Adora would give her a tiny sheepish grin before ducking her head away. Every time she did, something unfamiliarly soft would fill her up from her toes to her cheeks that she could tell were turning pink.

When the bell rang, Glimmer argued that the main reason she didn’t want to move was because she was just too tired, but she could tell it was a flimsy excuse of a lie and she hardly even cared.

Adora stood up, looking down once she had grabbed her backpack, “See ya!”

Glimmer sighed as she watched Adora bounce away from her. _See ya._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed, please consider leaving a kudo or a comment (they mean a lot to me!)  
I especially like talking to you guys and love getting feedback so feel free to leave a comment or send me an ask on tumblr @starlightinhumanform.  
Expect an update with in the next month (and hopefully sooner if I can get it written before then).  
🖤✨


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So I realized that I never actually explained the modern/high school names I had given some of the characters and as I’m starting to bring more in, it’d probably be a good idea to do that now.

  * Glimmer- Original
  * Adora- Original
  * Bow- Original
  * Catra- Cateline/Cat
  * Scorpia- Scylar
  * Mermista- Maha
  * Perfuma- Penelope 
  * Entrapta- Elizabeth 
  * Seahawk- Sebastian 
  * Hordak- Heith 
  * Frosta- Noelle 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If any of y’all have any questions about the names or just the universe in general, please leave a comment or send me a ask on tumblr (@starlightinhumanform).  
Ok now back to the story 🖤✨


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a side note that I consistently headcanon Bow as trans and although it doesn’t play a role in this fic, it is mentioned.

By the time the day ended, Glimmer was ready to bury herself under five blankets and spend the next four hours watching YouTube. Of course she couldn’t do that. Because life just wasn’t that easy.

Her feet shuffled in a way that could only be described as noncommittal- weak and only partially agreeing to their actions. Her head felt like it was filled to the brim with cotton, stuffed into a too tight headband that squeezed across her temples and made what was left in her head pound. Saturated; that’s was she was. Used up like a sponge.

Such things being considered, Glimmer was in a surprisingly good mood. So she couldn’t help but smile when she heard feet pound up from behind her and stop suddenly beside her.

“Hey, Bow!”

Bow was stopped, bent over with his hands on his knee and gasping for breath. He raised a finger up, “Just... give me a... moment.”

Glimmer giggled, “You good?”

Bow swung upright, “I can’t breathe but I’m great. How are you? Hopelessly in love?”

“I can not handle your bullshit right now,” Glimmer began walking but couldn’t help but smile slightly, “Blocked. Cancelled. Deleted.”

“Why? Because I’m right?” Bow had caught up with her again, grinning.

“It’s a crush Bow, nothing more. It’s definitely not love.”

Bow nodded as they continued walking, “Uh-huh. Is that why you’re blushing so hard?”

“I’m blushing because you are bothering me,” Glimmer grumbled out her words, and turned her head to raise an eyebrow at him. 

Bow raised an eyebrow back, “Wanna talk about it?”

Glimmer stopped walking and flopped backwards so she could lean dramatically against the hall’s cinderblock wall. She let her head roll backwards and stared up at the ceiling. The hall had cleared out, the distant sound of dance practice echoing between her and Bow. She still held a smile but it was quickly growing stale. It wasn’t that she was sad, or that she didn’t enjoy Bow’s company; there was just a lot to consider in that question.

Did she want to talk about it? Well, yes. There was so much she had to say and so much she wanted Bow to at least give his opinion or, at best, offer advice. But of all the things she wanted to say, there was so much she was scared to admit to. She doubted she would even mange to get half of it out. She would choke up and her words would lie, caught and festering somewhere in her throat. And there all those emotions would stay, blocked between her heart and her mouth. They would simmer there for a drawn out second before they boiled over and streamed down her cheeks. Bow would put his hands on her shoulders ask her what was wrong in his too-soft-for-his-own-good voice and Glimmer wouldn’t be able to tell him because the words burned as they bubbled and corroded her vocal chords.

But the feelings, they were hard to explain. She squinted up at the fluorescent panels which only marginally improved the lighting but greatly added to the prison-like atmosphere. The flickering bulbs were a thousand miles away as she tried to wrap her mind around the images flickering behind her eyes. Adora’s smile. The way her eyes shone when she sang. How her voice could wrap around Glimmer’s brain and find all the ways to make her glitch. How her body fit perfectly against Glimmer’s. The raw intensity with which Adora felt emotions and how she let them wash over whoever was nearby.

Bow’s feet made a scuffing sound as he shifted somewhat awkwardly across from Glimmer. The movement brought her back to the present and and made her wonder how long he had been standing there.

“I’m going to take that to mean that, yes, you do have something to say?” He prompted.

Glimmer let her head swing forward and blew a sigh through her nose.

_It’s like molten gold filling my chest. And it’s bright and it’s burning and god yes it hurts but it’s beautiful too. It’s smooth and it runs down my throat, stealing my voice. It coats my eyes and tints the world around me but that’s ok because it turns everything beautiful. And at the same time, it’s far too much and it scares me and it hurts because all that shining gold is more than I could ever deserve or ever handle. _

She couldn’t explain that. She would sound crazy. Bow probably wouldn’t see it as crazy, but he would take it too far. Glimmer was already freaking out about it, she couldn’t stand Bow freaking out on top of that.

“Glimmer?” Bow reached out, placing the expected gentle hand on her shoulder, “Is everything ok? Are _you_ ok?”

Glimmer gave a breathy laugh. She hadn’t even realized how blurry her eyes had become, “Yeah. Sorry.”

His eyebrows were wrinkled in concern and Glimmer could tell he was worried that he had somehow caused her distress, “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

She took a deep breath and made up her mind, “I have a lot to tell you actually. So let’s go to some place more comfortable than the middle of the hallway.”

Bow smiled, “Library?”

“Library.”

Bow and Glimmer had a well-established tradition of spending the time after school together, sharing stories and ranting about life in the library under the pretense that they were study partners. Everyone knew they weren’t actually doing work but left them alone because they stayed to their back-corner sofa and only rarely did the conversations dissolve into yelling.

They walked comfortably next to each other, unbothered when their shoulders bumped and chatting about the ridiculous amount of homework they would undoubtedly procrastinate doing that night.

People often mistook them as a couple; something which both Bow and Glimmer would laugh at. They had the running joke that if neither of them had found someone by the time they were 35, they would just marry each other. They were close as friends could be. He was the first one she had come out as bi to and she has the first he had come as trans to. Glimmer generally didn’t mind people thinking she was dating Bow, but sometimes she worried it would discourage other people from having interest in her. Then she would brush it off as ridiculous because she was pretty sure there was plenty of other things to discourage them.

They reached the library within a few minutes, both flopping dramatically onto their usual couch. They were in an emptier section of the library, most people at tables or occupied in the computer lab.

Glimmer swung her legs over the arm of the couch and leaned into Bow’s side. She let a defeated puff stream out of her mouth, once again unsure of what she could possible say.

Bow let them sit in silence for a few moments before prompting her again, “So... what was it that you wanted to tell me?”

She groaned, “Adora. Pretty. Girls. Yes. Crush.”

Bow laughed and patted her shoulder, “That all?”

Glimmer brought her hands up to hide her face in and shook her head, “Bow, I don’t even know where to start.”

She could feel him shrug against the weight of her body, “How about you just start from last night. I’m pretty sure you liked her before, if I’m being perfectly honest, but it sounds like it only got serious last night?”

The last sentence was stated as a question instead of a statement and Glimmer knew Bow was trying to bait her into giving more information. She gave in, returning the shrug, “Yeah I guess. I have no idea how long I’ve liked her but I think it’s been almost the whole year.”

“Why do you think it took you so long to realize?”

Glimmer had to take a deep breath for that one, “Because I hated her. Because I was jealous of her. And because I was scared of liking her.”

“Ok,” Glimmer could hear the hesitation in his voice, “And why was that?”

“I just- you know how- I couldn’t,” she paused before trying again, “There were- are- a lot of reasons. I just feel like I shouldn’t. I still think liking girls is something bad or at least dangerous.”

Bow started to say something but Glimmer continued before he could get a word in, “So there was that guilt and I guess disgust. It’s that internalized homophobia bullshit. I think that’s what they call it? Anyways, I know Adora won’t go for me and I’ll just get hurt and I know I’m stupid for getting so infatuated.”

This time Bow was able to interrupt, “I wouldn’t be so sure of that if I were you.”

Glimmer snorted, “Oh, and why is that? Has she privately confessed her love for me to you?”

“Well no-“

“Look, Bow, she’s popular and she’s beautiful and she could probably get any girl she wanted. She’s definitely not going to settle for me.”

“Hey hey first of all,” he elbowed her in the back, “nobody has to ‘settle’ for you. We’ve talked about this. What have I told you?”

Glimmer rolled her eyes, “I’m not going to say it.”

He elbowed her again, “Say it, coward.”

She blew a raspberry before droning out the ridiculous mantra Bow had told her in a monotone voice, “I am gorgeous and perfect in every way. I am a queen; y’all are peasants and do not deserve to witness my glory.”

Bow nodded, “You may continue.”

“You’re so stupid. Anyways, _with your permission to continue_, even if Adora does have the slightest interest in me- which she doesn’t and will continue not to- Cat would get jealous. I’m pretty sure she already is with this stupid project. She won’t let Adora anywhere near me as soon as the project finishes.”

“How do you know that? Adora’s her own person. She can hang out with you if she wants to- no matter what Cat thinks. And by the way, I think she will want to hang out with you.”

Glimmer felt her throat going tight, “She told me she wanted to be friends but I don’t think she meant it.”

“Glimmer, that’s great!! What makes you think she wouldn’t mean it?”

“I don’t know,” Glimmer hesitated once more, “She was acting really weird last night.”

Bow rolled his hand in a _Go on_ motion.

Glimmer’s stomach clenched as her mind flashed back to the night before. She sat up, hunching over her knees as she were worried the sensation would show through. It all seemed very far away, surely longer than the 24 hours reality told her it was. It all seemed very fake. Adora couldn’t possibly have looked at her with that much affection in her eyes. She couldn’t have asked her to dance and laughed so loud Glimmer was sure someone would hear. She certainly didn’t stand a breath away from Glimmer and give her a smirk that made her insides freeze. It was simply impossible.

“Glimmer?” Bow leaned sideways to bump his shoulder into hers, “What do you mean weird?”

“Just very affectionate I guess,” She looked up at Bow, knowing what was coming and not sure if she would be able to answer.

“How is that a bad thing?” There it was.

“Because,” Glimmer seemed to choke for a moment and she could swear it was because her heart was in her throat, “I know that it probably wasn’t real; it was probably just Adora being tired and getting clingy or something. And because I know it won’t ever happen again. And knowing that hurts.”

Bow reached and took one of her hands in his. They were warmer and sturdier than hers- small and trembling. It was such a normal, familiar action but all she could think about was Adora’s hands in hers’ as they sat side by side and she attempted to teach her how to use chopsticks. It had to be some surreal dream. That would be easier. That would make _sense_. She felt vulnerable and exposed. No doubt the entire library was acting as witness to her breakdown. She hunkered into herself further, almost entirely folded in half now. She just wanted it all to pause. Things would be so much easier if they marched in one at a time. Instead life liked to throw a thousand problems at her at once. And sometimes those problems looked like soccer players who smiled a little too brightly because they were trying to hide just how much more like the ocean they were than the sun. Adora wasn’t stupid; she was deep and dark and sometimes the shades twisted from blues to jagged purples which undoubtably scraped against her sides. Glimmer wanted to learn every shade of that girl- yes the happy yellows but also the stormy grays. She wanted to dull the shards that hurt Adora and do her best heal the wounds she couldn’t prevent. But she would never get the chance. It was all fantasy. The melancholy was corrosive.

Bow squeezed her hand in his grip, cueing her to look up. When he spoke it was with a slow, steady voice. Glimmer knew that voice; that was the voice he used when Glimmer was about to shatter into a million pieces.

She breathed in deeply through her nose and tried to concentrate on his words, “I know this may seem very unrealistic to you but I really don’t think Adora’s affection was fake or just some side effect. I don’t think you just give up on it happening again.”

Glimmer’s face collapsed into a combination of disdain, incredulity, and despair, “If I keep holding onto hope, I’m going to keep getting hurt every time I’m inevitably disappointed.”

“How do you know you’re going to get disappointed though?!” Bow waved his arms out in a way that would have been comical if Glimmer wasn’t on the verge of tears. He was starting to get exasperated, his voice rising dangerously shrill and loud.

Glimmer hissed out a shush and clapped his arms back down to his body.

She rolled her eyes, “Look, I’ll live in your make-believe world for a second, ok? Let’s say that Adora does like me- platonically, romantically, whatever it doesn’t matter. Even if she does, Cat is not going to stand being around me. She hates me. So Adora will have to choose between me and Cat. That will have two possible results: Most likely, she will choose her best friend and leave me behind. That result can be summed up as: _Ouch_. Either that or she’ll choose me. From then on, Cat will hate me more than she already does- and I do not want to find out what that would mean- and Adora will always resent me because I’m the reason she and her best friend fell apart.“

Bow nodded sagely for a moment, “You’ve really thought this through.”

She could tell he wasn’t as concerned with her hypothetical situations as she was. This time it was her voice that reached a dangerously high volume, “Yes of course I’ve thought this through! Have you met me?! I think everything through!”

“Ok true, but I still don’t think-“

“Actually I’m not finished yet! Because even if by some miracle, Cat and I are able to ‘coexist,’ then I’m always going to be an accessory to Cat and Adora’s relationship. I will always be an add-on; something that is merely tolerated. And I will not be able to stand that. I would rather never talk to Adora again than have to deal with that.”

“Glimmer I get it and you’re making some good points, it’s just,” he paused, pinching the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes, piecing together his words, “of all those situations you’ve thought up, you’ve never once considered the possibility that things will turn out ok.” 

Glimmer leaned sideways into Bow, just trying to affirm that she had heard him. She hated making Bow this exasperated. She knew he was just trying to help her. Hell, maybe he was even right. Still, Glimmer was thinking realistically. She was thinking cautiously. She was... she has no idea what she was doing.

“You know, Glimmer,” Bow returned the lean in her direction, “sometimes the world doesn’t suck.”

She rolled her eyes, “Mm, really? And you’d be what? An expert of the world’s constant condition?”

Bow sat up straight and puffed out his chest, “Yes in fact.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Glimmer’s voice still wavered as she spoke, but she could feel a grin start to grow across her lips.

“And you know what? I might be ridiculous, but I like to think that I’ll be right one of these times.”

Glimmer loved Bow’s optimism but it often came across to her as purely naive. She wished he could be right about this, if only to give him the satisfaction. But it was unrealistic and the sooner she accepted that fact, the easier it would be to take reality’s crushing blow. And the sooner Bow stopped encouraging her wishful thinking, the easier it would be to accept.

But he was giving her a grin that held nothing but purity and confidence, and she couldn’t break that. She tried to return the smile, “Sure. We’ll see.”

His smile grew until he was beaming, “Yep! We will!”

Satisfied that he had beaten Glimmer into optimistic submission, Bow slapped the sofa seat next to him, “Come on, I gotta go.” 

They moved towards the exit together, chatting casually as they weaved through tables of clustered students. The library was filled with the quiet bubbling of 50 voices, each trying not to make noise but none the less adding to the atmosphere of sound. It was relaxing to some extent and apparently Bow found it safe enough to continue their conversation.

“So... what _would_ you do if Adora liked you back? I mean, like, would you go on dates or-”

Glimmer nearly tackled him to the ground but instead froze, hissing, “Shut up! Elizabeth is right there! She hangs out with Adora sometimes! What if she heard you _yelling_?!”

Bow’s eyes lit up at the mention of Elizabeth, “Really? Where is she?”

“Don’t look so happy about it; she right at the table behind you!”

Bow spun around and waved, “Hey Elizabeth!”

The girl jolted up from where she had been hunched over the table, “Oh, hey Bow!”

Teachers often got Glimmer and Elizabeth mixed up; Glimmer never understood why. She wore huge, round glasses and had a fascination with math that Glimmer could never possibly possess. It was true that they both had dyed hair, but her’s was far darker and nearly hit the floor. (How Elizabeth didn’t trip over it every time she stood up was a mystery Glimmer would never solve).

It wasn’t that Glimmer minded Elizabeth but-

“This is not the time!” Glimmer grabbed Bow’s hand and began dragging him towards the doors.

Before they could actually get out outside, Elizabeth popped up in front of them, grinning broadly and practically shouting when she spoke, “What were you saying about Adora?”

Elizabeth had a habit of appearing randomly in your face, without any warning and giving Glimmer a heart attack every time. That being said, Glimmer was having a heart attack. Even if Elizabeth hadn’t startled her by materializing out of the blue and effectively blocking her escape route, yelling about Adora in the middle of the library definitely would’ve been enough to push Glimmer off the edge.

Glimmer’s eyes widened and it felt like the wind had been punched out of her- a solid blow straight to core. She struggled to find anything to say, simply trying to remember how to breathe. Finally she shook her head and grabbed Bow and Elizabeth’s hand, “Out. Both of you.”

“Oh, wait- wow. Your hands are really strong.”

Glimmer ignored Elizabeth’s chatter as she barreled outside. When they turned the corner Glimmer let go of their hands and turned so she could glare at both of them. They stood with their backs to the building wall, shoulder to shoulder like a police line up.

The campus continued to move around them as they stood in awkward silence. Glimmer paced back and forth, wringing her hands. She had made an impulsive decision when she grabbed Elizabeth and now she had to deal with the consequences. Bow stood with his arms crossed, staring at random things and avoiding where Glimmer was treading miles through the sidewalk. Elizabeth on the other hand seemed to be entirely unbothered, humming to herself and fidgeting with something she had pulled out of her pocket.

Glimmer shook her head; she was being stupid, “Look, Elizabeth, I’m sorry I dragged you out here. I was really overreacting and I’m sorry you had to be a part of that. Just _please_ don’t mention anything about Adora to anyone.”

“Hmm what?” Elizabeth jerked her head up, “Oh! Adora. Yeah, her, I think she’s cool. I think we might be friends. Not sure. That would be nice though.”

Elizabeth spoke in short, choppy sentences that bounced from one topic to another and made Glimmer’s head hurt. She pinched the bridge of her nose, “Yes, we’re talking about Adora. Just please forget I said anything about her.”

“So let me get this straight. You’re talking about Adora, you _told_ me you were talking about Adora,” Elizabeth was moving her hands in front of her face like she was playing an invisible game of connect the dots, “But you don’t want me to know you were talking about Adora?”

Bow squinted, “Yeah that sounds about right.”

“Just, whatever you heard, don’t tell anyone any of it. Please?”

Elizabeth darted forward towards Glimmer, staring hard into her face. She continued to scrutinize Glimmer as she began to speak, “You have a crush in her don’t you?”

Glimmer’s hand itched to clamp itself over Elizabeth’s mouth. She let her own lips fall open, once again struggling desperately to find words to fill the space with. She attempted to regain some veneer of composure, standing up straighter and turning her chin slightly in the air, “I will neither confirm or deny anything concerning that matter.”

“So... is that a yes?”

“No! Its nothing!” Glimmer growled.

“You’re not acting like it’s nothing,” Bow spoke with a smug grin and subtly raised eyebrows.

Glimmer glared at Bow for a second before breaking off the staring contest by rubbing the palms of her hands upwards across her face and settling across her eyes. This situation had been out of her control since Weaver had assigned her to be partners with Adora. Maybe it had been out of her hands since Adora scampered into her seat in the first day of school, laughing loudly at something Cat had said. Now nothing was in her hands except her own tired fears.

“Hey,” Elizabeth’s voice broke through the darkness Glimmer was hiding behind, “I’ve gotta go so I’m just gonna... um, yeah, bye!”

Glimmer looked up to see Elizabeth jogging back to the library. The girl paused for a moment to wave before disappearing inside. Glimmer sighed and collapsed into a lump on the concrete. She looked up at Bow, “She’s going to say something isn’t she?”

Bow scratched the back of his head. It was possible he was trying to think, but it was more likely he was just buying time; Glimmer knew he didn’t want to say exactly what she knew he was going to say. He deflated and sat down next to Glimmer, “I don’t think she’d do it on purpose. She might just... forget not to.”

Glimmer flopped backwards. The clouds were drifting across the sky slowly; beautiful, serine motions that ran in paradox to her racing mind; so many thoughts and they all blurred together into one word. _Shit_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed :) Feel free to leave comment and give me some feedback!   
Expect the next update before the end of the month.   
Love you all 🖤✨


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angella really is doing her darnedest best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today is the 6 month anniversary of this fic skhdkhdkhhkl I can hardly believe this has been going on for HALF A YEAR?? I have to say,,, this has turned out to be much slower of a burn than I originally expected but oh well, the story will do what it wants. 
> 
> I am so happy and excited to continue working on it. I have found such a sweet and wonderful community through this silly story and I hope you all know just how much I appreciate each and every one of you. 🖤✨

A few hours and several hastily done homework assignments later, Glimmer sat across from her mother at the dinner table and quietly moved broccoli across her plate. It was her mom’s day off which meant they finally got the chance to spend time together. Unfortunately it also meant her mother felt obligated to cook dinner.

She glanced up to see her mother mirroring her actions, using her fork to bat at what Glimmer could only assume to be something that was- at one point or another- a vegetable.

Her mother wrinkled her nose as she looked up at Glimmer, “It’s not very good is it?”

Glimmer smiled, trying to lighten the blow, “It’s not... great, no.” 

Angella sighed, “Pizza again?”

“Well, I don’t know. This isn’t _too_ inedible.”

She stuck her tongue out at Glimmer and laughed, “Stop teasing me! I’m trying my best!”

Her mother began moving to get up, presumably to order a pizza for the third week in a row, but Glimmer scrambled to get out of her chair first, “I’ll get it don’t worry!”

Glimmer had a hate/love relationship with having her mom finally home. She enjoyed being able to see her and rant about the stupid shit both of them had been forced to deal with. Their was a certain comfort in laughing until you’re crying with a person you _know_ has the same sense of humor as you. On the flip side, that didn’t happen very often. At least, not anymore. It was far more common for Angella to laugh lightly, leaving Glimmer wondering where all the joy her mother used to hold had gone. She was tired. Work was hard and long and unpredictable; things would have been far easier if she wasn’t the only one bringing income into the household. Glimmer saw the stress it put on her mother- both physically and mentally- and wished she could do something to fix it all.

“Thank you, dear,” Glimmer could hear the relief in her mother’s voice and knew her legs must have been bothering her after standing on them all day.

“Yeah no problem, Mom,” Glimmer grabbed her phone off the kitchen counter and was about to dial the local pizza place when a notification flag caught her eye. The text came from a number unregistered in her contacts but she knew it well. _Adora_.

She could only see the first few words of the message:

**Hey! I was wondering... **

A thousand possible situations flashed across Glimmer’s mind- most of them revolving around the image of Elizabeth chattering away to Adora, casual as could be while she ripped apart Glimmer’s world.

And now Adora was texting her, probably asking why the hell Glimmer would ever possibly be foolish enough to crush on someone so out of her league. But she would never say anything like that; she would try to let Glimmer down easy. And it would hurt so much worse because Glimmer wouldn’t even have the comfort of hiding behind anger. It would all be soft words and sympathetic frowns and dull blades that did so much more damage than the one sweeping sword Glimmer wished Adora would reject her with, but knew she never would.

“Everything ok?” Angella called from the dining table, probably wondering why she hadn’t heard a sound when this was usually around the time Glimmer tried to sneak pineapple onto their order.

“Yeah, sorry! Got a little distracted!” Glimmer prayed her voice didn’t sound as strangled as felt in her throat.

“Well hurry up!! I’m hungry!”

Glimmer smiled at her mother’s playfully impatient tone before glaring down at the unopened notification.

She was tempted to throw her phone as far away from her as possible. Maybe into the garbage disposal at which time the switch would mysteriously flip on and the disposer would grind to life, ending all of Glimmer’s problems. On the other hand, she wanted pizza.

Glimmer paused for a second to think, bringing out all her customary mannerisms to do so- from chewing her lip to tapping her foot.

“Are you alright? Glimmer, is there really so much to be distracted by?”

Glimmer set her phone back on the counter face down and took a deep breath. She wasn’t ready to deal with whatever Adora was going to say. Or rather, had said and was now simply waiting for Glimmer to acknowledge. But Glimmer, in all her stubborn brilliance, decided she wasn’t going to acknowledge it. Not yet. Right now she was going to order some god damn pizza, attempt to sneak some pineapple onto it, and spend the rest of the night talking to her mom. The world owed her that much of a break.

She glanced over at her phone, its pastel rainbow case hardly representing the threat Glimmer felt it contained at the moment. All she had to do was was grab the phone and open the lock screen before she got a chance to read the message. Easy-peasy. She felt like a runner, coiled up at the starting line and ready to spring. She gave a small huff of a laugh. _It’s just a text; you’re not trying to dodge bullets. _

“Glimmer, what are you doing?”

“Yeah, Mom, sorry. I’m getting it now.”

“You’re not texting you friends are you?”

The irony very nearly got a legitimate laugh out of Glimmer, “No, Mom.”

She grabbed her phone, opened her lock with her thumbprint, and exhaled a breath she didn’t she had been holding. The message app held a red little bubble, trying to get her attention so she would answer the texts that had piled up since the last time she had checked. Glimmer knew at least four of them would be Bow, sending her memes. But one of them was Adora.

She shook her head. When it came down to it, she wanted pizza right now far more than she wanted any type of drama. Glimmer quickly pulled up her contacts, gave her usual order to one of the workers and walked back to the dining room; she left her phone in the kitchen.

Glimmer slid sideways into her chair, “So how was your day?”

Angella shrugged, “Pretty boring, really. Didn’t do much.”

“I mean that’s kinda the point of a day off,” Glimmer nodded as she spoke, trying to concentrate on the conversation instead of on the unopened message that waited for her on the kitchen counter. She felt guilty as her mind drifted away from what- no, _who_\- she knew was more important. But it was like fighting an ocean’s tide; no matter how hard you grip the waves, they’re always going to pull away. And through her fingers, Glimmer’s attention would slip, always finding its way back to Adora.

It was beginning to be infuriating. The past few days had seemed completely centered around Adora. Every second Glimmer was getting a stomach ache over worrying about her or she was melting into some sad, pining puddle. Even when she managed to hold some composure, there was some nagging little feeling deep in the back of her mind that would eventually manage to bait and trap her focus. It was beginning to be ridiculous. This certainly wasn’t Glimmer’s first time having a crush, but she had never felt so trapped by her emotions before. It had never been this suffocating, so all-consuming. Anyways, she had more important things to be doing than daydreaming about something that was just that- a dream. But it was beginning to be unnerving. Because Glimmer didn’t know how to stop it.

“Hello there? Earth to Glimmer?”

“Hmm?” Glimmer snapped back to the present, scolding her mind for let her get so wrapped up in the middle of a conversation, “Hi. What were you saying?”

Her mom was smiling, “I was just asking how your day was, Miss Head in the Clouds.”

Glimmer pushed a smile onto her lips, “Oh, yeah I’m fine.”

Across the table, her mother’s eyebrows were pressed together, “You seem very tense.”

It was presented as a statement but Glimmer knew it was a question she was expected to answer.

“Really, I’m fine. I just have a big project right now and it’s... causing me some problems.” _Well that’s not a lie. _

“Oh?” Angella sat up a little, “What’s it on? What class is it for? What do you have to do?”

Her enthusiasm wasn’t contagious but it did hold a level of charm. Glimmer shook her head, “It’s not nearly as fun or exciting as you think it is. We just have to build a model of an element.”

“Wait is this for your chemistry class with that horrible teacher?” Glimmer’s mother jumped in, interrupting her with surprising passion, “What sort of problems are you having?”

Glimmer rolled her eyes, “Really, Mom, it’s no big deal. I’m... figuring it out, ok?”

Her mind flashed back to the time her mother had marched into the school’s front office- fuming and probably ready to physically fight someone- after Glimmer had complained about some idiots mocking her for being bi. It had been more infuriating than insulting or anything actually impactful. But Angella, in all of her attempts to be a supportive and protective mother, had decided to take matters into her own hands.

“And, uh, I don’t need any help.”

Her mother’s face fell in what Glimmer knew was disappointment, “Oh definitely. I’m sure you can handle it.”

“But if I need help, I’ll definitely tell you,” Glimmer tried.

Angella’s face brightened; it was nice to see her smile, “Ok!”

Silence settled between them. Angella let her eyes roam over Glimmer, studying her. It was obvious she was looking for something, mouth set and eyes slightly squinted. If anyone else had done it, Glimmer would have squirmed and snapped at them for even acknowledging her existence, let alone making her acknowledge it.

Glimmer just snorted though in response to her mother’s scrutiny, “Can I help you?”

Angella gave a tiny frown, “There’s something else going on. You have way too many thoughts floating around in your eyes for this just to be about a project.”

Glimmer shrugged and decided to focus on the easier subject of her plate instead of her mother. Her fork made a _plink plink_ sound as she tapped it against the rim of her plate. It was almost funny to think she was so consumed by it all that apparently just her eyes gave it away. Just as strongly, it was disgusting to think she was so consumed by it, just her eyes gave it away. Even when she was trying to focus on something else, the thoughts in her head were loud enough to be heard by everyone around her.

Her mom’s frown deepened at Glimmer’s avoident answer, “Come on, what’s up?”

Glimmer looked up. Her mother’s warm brown eyes were searching her, concern written clearly on her face. It made a Glimmer wonder- if her mother was so easily readable- what her own face was displaying. What pining, sick to her stomach, completely hopeless novel she set down for people to see whenever they passed her.

Glimmer smiled sadly, if only for her mother’s beauty. She and Glimmer had dyed their hair together and the long pink strands drifted across her eyes and onto her shoulders. Her face was filled with determined warmth, trying to fix whatever was bothering Glimmer. But the creases between her eyebrows were far too deep and the frown on her face fit into place too comfortably. Glimmer didn’t want to add to those lines.

She waved her hand casually, “I’m just having some people problems.”

Her mother leaned forward, “What sort of people?”

Glimmer gave up. Maybe it would be better just to come clean, “Pretty people. There’s a girl in one of my classes that I kind of like.”

“Oh!” Glimmer couldn’t help but laugh at her mother’s genuinely surprised expression.

“What? You really thought my heart was so cold I couldn’t fall for someone?”

Angella opened and closed her mouth before speaking, “No, no it’s not that. That’s just not the type of problems you usually have. That’s almost, like, a normal problem.”

Glimmer rolled her eyes, “Wow, Mom, thanks. That’s not at all vaguely insulting.”

“That’s not what I meant! But that’s fun, isn’t it?” She had gained happy little light in her eyes and clapped her hands excitedly, “Tell me about her! Also a _her_? I mean, this is the first time you’ve told me about having a girl crush.”

Glimmer could feel her face flushing cherry red. There were so many open wounds her mother had bothered in just a few seconds of speech. Because, no, it wasn’t fun. It was overwhelming and terrifying and it had all hit so fast. It was like a tsunami- no warning and then _boom_ the water was over Glimmer’s head and she was just struggling not to drown. And every time someone talked to her, they were assuming she was standing in the shallow end and just needed to remember how to swim. But swimming wasn’t going to help her now.

And it was intoxicating, all of her thoughts swarmed by emotions that buzzed and made it hard for any ideas to come through clearly. But it was addictive; she could let herself just float in that white noise for the rest of time. She could let herself sink beneath the waves and ignore her lungs as they screamed for air.

“Yeah,” Glimmer let the fork fall back to the plate and moved her hands to start fidgeting in her lap, “I think we’re both still getting used to the whole ‘girl’ thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, don’t you think it could be-“ Glimmer’s voice had risen in aggravation but cracked as she searched for a way to wrap all of her fears into one word, “Dangerous?”

“Glimmer, my darling, we live in a very accepting area- I know two whole lesbians at my job!! I think you’re overthinking it-“

Glimmer slammed the palm of her hand flat down on the tabletop, “Yes! I know! I do that! And people seem to think that telling me how ridiculous I’m acting will help! And guess what? It doesn’t. It doesn’t help in the slightest because maybe, just maybe, I’ll be right one of these days. Because the world sucks so why wouldn’t something else go wrong?!”

“I-“ Angella seemed speechless, marveling at the fury in Glimmer’s eyes. Glimmer sat stiffly and breathed heavily like she had just sprinted a mile. She dared her mother to challenge her.

Finally Glimmer was the one to give in, letting her posture collapse and the anger subside, “I’m sorry. You don’t deserve that. It’s just, I’m so tired of being different. I stand out so much already. I’m the kid who can’t do anything but art and I cry too easily and I’m the one whose dad died... I wish I didn’t have to add my sexuality to that list.”

“Oh, darling,” Her mother’s voice was soft and seemed to dissolve into pieces as it broke.

Glimmer realized that maybe she had taken it too far, gone too deep, “I’m sorry. Just ignore what I said.”

“No, if you want to talk-“

Glimmer attempted once again to change the tone, smile a little too forced and voice a little too loud, “So about this girl. Yes! She’s very pretty and smart and funny.”

Angella’s lips twitched into a frown, “You sound like you’re reading off a list. I can tell you’re just trying to avoid the subject, even though you _are_ the one that brought it up.”

Glimmer shrugged and popped a vegetable into her mouth, regretting her actions as the taste hit her but thankful that she didn’t have to answer.

Her mother pursed her lips, “I don’t like you closing everything up from me but-“

The doorbell drilled from across the room and Glimmer jumped up, practically running away from the table, “Pizza’s here!”

She walked back into the room a minute later and set the box down with an exaggerated flourish. She let the performance drop with a grimace when she noticed the defeated look on her mother’s face.

She didn’t try to hide the sigh that escaped her, “What’s wrong, Mom?”

“I don’t know,” Angella shook her head, “I just feel like we haven’t been, I don’t know, connecting lately.”

_Maybe that’s because you’re never home._ Glimmer bit her tongue, immediately feeling guilty for the words that had very nearly jumped out of her mouth. _You _know_ she doesn’t get to choose when her shifts are. You _know_ she works long hours for you. And maybe she would know more if you actually told her anything. _

Glimmer reached to open the pizza box and grab a piece, buying time for her to fish for a more appropriate response in her mind. She wished she could just shrug again and brush the whole interrogation off her shoulders. But her mother had a look of soft pleading in her eyes that Glimmer knew was actually veiling steely stubbornness. There was no way she could win this.

She took a bite and chewed it slowly, all while keeping eye contact with her mother. It was a contest of wills at that point and they both knew it. But every possible strategy and escape route Glimmer could construct had twisted itself into a dead end.

“Well, I’m here now so... let’s ‘connect’ I guess,” The words felt weird and awkward as they left her mouth.

Angella leaned forward, grinning triumphantly, “How’s school been going? Have you started any new art projects? Also this girl- what’s so problematic about her?”

The last question caught Glimmer off guard, “I never said she was problematic. What makes you say that?”

Her mother gave a vague, noncommittal twitch to her lips before looking away and grabbing a slice off pizza for herself. Glimmer almost burst out laughing- _She’s using my own tactics against me. _

After a moment Angella spoke, “There just seems to be more going on; there’s something that’s bothering you right now. Did something happen today?”

Glimmer resolved to shredding the remaining crust in her hands to tiny pieces that she then threw at her plate. There were a thousand things her mother could have been picking up on, all the stray thoughts that bumping on the edges of her mind and dragged her off topic. But there was only one thought that took center stage; Elizabeth and whatever trouble she had no doubt already gotten Glimmer into.

The reminder of Adora’s text still waiting for her in the other room made Glimmer queasy. She felt like Adora was herself perched in the kitchen, patiently waiting for Glimmer to notice her. Glimmer could just see her sitting in the edge of the counter and swinging her legs out, probably looking far too cute than she had any right to given the danger she represented.

It was no wonder that her mother could tell something was up when Glimmer was practically squirming in her seat. Not that Glimmer would admit that. It was too close to the surface; one of those issues that caused her so much more pain because the wave could crest at any moment and the entire crisis would come crashing down her. It was the difference between slowly turning the shower temperature up bit by bit- yes, you might be aware of the damage in the back of your mind but it doesn’t really bother you- and simply thrusting your arm into a boiling pot of water.

Admitting to her discomfort would be admitting to the problem’s existence. She wasn’t ready to do that yet; wasn’t ready to take her arm out of the boiling water. Worst of all, she wasn’t ready to treat the inevitable burns.

The whole situation with Elizabeth was way too delicate to let her mother stomp into the scene. It was a white hot rod that twisted within her and kept her sitting stiffly as it ran the entire length of her torso. But it was like leaving a ticking bomb in the middle of the room and expecting her mom to ignore it.

Glimmer tapped the tongs of her fork against her throughly destroyed crust, occasionally stabbing into it.

Her mother blinked across at her, patient for an answer to the point of obstinance.

Glimmer gave her an awkward scowl, “Yeah, there’s just been some complications.”

Angella opened her mouth, obviously prepared to protest but Glimmer bolted up quickly, filling the room with the sound of her chair screeching against the floor before her mom could fill the space with any other sort of noise.

She grabbed her plate and rushed out of the room before she would have to admit to anything else- or have her body language admit it for her. She let the plate clatter as she hurriedly set it down in the sink and continued down the hall, moving in a straight line to nowhere in particular other than just away. Away from all the reminders. Away from her mother’s eyes that managed to pick her apart with just a glance. Away from those eyes that were too tired and too sad.

It wasn’t until she was half way down the hall that Glimmer realized she had taken her phone with her. She must have impulsively snatched it as she walked out of the kitchen. As much as she wished, it was too late to put it back.

Glimmer paused momentarily and stared down at the small device in her hand. _It’s just a phone. It can’t _actually_ hurt you. Even if Adora’s message is, you know, crushing and life ruining, it’s not like she can REALLY do anything to you. _The voice of reason sounded flimsy and unsure if itself even to Glimmer- and she was the one creating it. _Look loser, you’re gonna have to deal with it eventually. _

That made more sense.

She stopped stalling and trudged into her room, careful not to slam the door to assure her mom that she wasn’t mad. Glimmer tripped her way over to her bed; her room was still a war zone of craft supplies from the night before.

Even that was a surreal experience. Part of Glimmer was still convinced none of it had ever happened, another part was sure it had occurred years ago. A final piece whispered that Adora taking up space in her room and her voice filling the house was the norm and Glimmer being by herself was the alien situation.

Glimmer flopped backwards onto her bed. She almost wondered if the soft impression Adora had left in the sheets was still there. She almost wondered if they had held onto that hyper-specific scent that Glimmer knew you could only notice if you sat right next to Adora- or if she had her arms wrapped around you. She almost closed her eyes and tried to pretend that Adora was still there and they still had a few hours until the morning and more clay to paint and time was still their’s to play with because they were just a couple of dumb teens trying to live their lives and sometimes that meant abandoning human constructs and dancing to Hozier. She almost did that. Almost. But she didn’t. She hadn’t fallen that far.

She stared up at her ceiling for a second. It was too bright in there with her lights on for the star stickers to glow. Instead they just sat there looking mildly dirty, just some dusty greenish yellow spots above her that could never measure up to the real thing.

Glimmer finally stopped procrastinating and raised her phone above her face so that she couldn’t see that sickly stars anymore- just the still darkened screen of what was surely her doom.

She took one last gulp of air and she tapped in her password. The message icon was bright green, but it might as have been dark indigo because Glimmer felt like she was diving into a bottomless ocean trench as she opened the app. _Here goes nothing._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok I know this is slightly a cliffhanger and I’m so sorry to say that I have finals and a bunch of schedule changes coming up so I have no idea when the next chapter will be posted (sometime before the end of 2019??)
> 
> ALSO I haven’t mentioned this in a while. so I just want to apologize for all the spelling and grammar mistakes my dyslexic ass makes 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed! Please consider leaving a kudo or a comment (they really do mean the world to me). And feel free to tell me what you thought of this chapter!!   
Love you all 🖤✨


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The chapter that fixes everything. (Not really). (But kind of).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ✨hello darlings✨ 
> 
> Did I say I was going to get this posted before the end 2019? Yes. Did that happen? No. Am I sorry? Incredibly so.  
Writer’s block hit me like a semi truck and I couldn’t write a single word on this fic for an entire month. I’m very happy that I was finally able to work on it and get it out to all you wonderful people!! 
> 
> I’m very excited for the future of this fic and I appreciate your continued support through all the ups and downs 🖤🖤

**Hey I was wondering how you were? Lmao I sound like a grandma but really. You seemed kinda out of it today and I wanted to make sure you were doing alright (it’s probably cuz I kept you up working on the dumb project all night lol) so yeah just wanted to check in cuz we didn’t really get to talk today :) **

The first thing that struck Glimmer about the text was the fact that Adora had written her an entire paragraph. The second thing that hit her was that the entire said paragraph was all basically to ask how she was. It was silly and overly concerned and so very _Adora. _Nobody else would do something so sweet and manage to make it so ridiculous at that same time.

A wave of relief washed over Glimmer. So Adora wasn’t asking about Elizabeth and hadn’t mentioned anything about Glimmer’s crush. Glimmer could remain safe in her little bubble as long as Adora stayed within her own lines of ignorance. That would only last so long, however. For all she knew, that bubble had already popped. 

Glimmer realized with a start that it was quite possible that Adora was simply leading up to that point, too polite to confront her right off the bat. _Just wanted to check in... we didn’t really get to talk today. _

Either Adora _actually _was just asking her what was up, or she wanted to “talk” to her. Glimmer wasn’t sure which option was more terrifying. Given how their past conversations had gone, Glimmer had absolutely no confidence in her ability to talk to anyone, let alone to someone she was crushing on- let alone to Adora.

She chewed her lip for a second, unsure of what to do. If Adora was still clueless and she started confessing to something Adora was completely unaware of, it would be worse than Elizabeth confessing it for her.

She thought of Adora, chilling at home, probably working away on some assignment like the nerd that she was. Glimmer started giggling at the idea of Adora pausing for a moment because she got a text and it was just Glimmer screaming: _YES I HAVE A MAJOR CRUSH ON YOU EVERYTHING ELIZABETH SAID WAS TRUE ALSO WOULD YOU LIKE TO RUN AWAY WITH ME AND START A SHEEP FARM IN THE NETHERLANDS??? _

Yeah, ok so that option was not going to happen. She should probably just play it cool, like a normal person texting their normal friend. Her brain felt the need to interject: _Yeah right- “__normal person__,“ that’s you. _The little voice continued: _“Normal friend”- that’s a funny way to put it. _

Suddenly another wave hit Glimmer, and this one felt like an entire brick wall crumbing on top of her. Except it was good. It felt soft and warm and made Glimmer feel like maybe, just maybe, things would be ok. The sensation spread up from her toes and erupted in her chest until it reached the very tips of her fingers. It made her stretch her legs out and reach backwards with her arms until they were fully extended because it filled her heart up so much, she couldn’t contain it all in her small form.

Because even if Glimmer wasn’t as close to Adora as she wanted, they were friends. At least, that’s where things were hopefully pointing to. Was it perfect? No. Was it everything Glimmer wanted and more? Obviously not. But was it good? _God_, yes. It was something Glimmer had never thought was possible; it was something she had been actively trying not to pursue out of the conviction that it would all go wrong and she would get hurt. But this didn’t hurt. Not in the slightest.

Riding on the euphoria, she typed out a quick response:

_I’m good. And yeah sorry I was pretty tired today lol Weaver has destroyed my sleep schedule. Also you sound like you ACTUALLY want me to talk to you?? How absolutely scandalous??? _

Glimmer let her feet swing back and forth, heels kicking against the side of her mattress. Tiny little bubbles of hope kept rising up towards her head because this was almost- very, nearly maybe- a step forward. A step towards being a little more than friends with Adora. _Ha, this isn’t a step towards anything. You’re not going to get anywhere with her. Getting this high off the ground just means it’ll hurt more when this cloud dissolves under your feet. Because that’s exactly what this is- you’re letting yourself rely on cotton candy daydreams and sooner or later they’re going to dissolve beneath you. _

Glimmer shook the negative thoughts off and switched conversations to scroll through the memes Bow had sent her. They were undoubtedly funny but she hardly registered the images; she had other things to be happy about.

Bow was probably going to annoy her about this later but Glimmer couldn’t resist the urge to gush:

_BOW BOW BOW _

_SHE’S TEXTING ME _

_LIKE A FRIEND _

_ASKING ME HOW I AM _

**OOO??? **

Glimmer grinned at Bow’s quick response but she knew the real reason she was smiling.

_I knoooooooow. I so happy_

**So you still think she hates you? **

Her grin faltered for a moment before returning, slightly weaker than it had been before.

_BLEH why’d you have to bring that upppppp_

_And I don’t know? Maybe she doesn’t hate me but she doesn’t have any reason NOT to_

**Glimmer i love you but you can be SO DENSE sometimes **

**She DOES have a reason not to hate you?? Maybe it’s possible that she thinks you’re smart and funny and talented? I don’t know tho- I’m just throwing stuff out here. Also she might actually LIKE you maybe as a friend,,, maybe more ;) **

Glimmer snorted at Bow’s ranting. He was sweet and a far better friend than she could ever rationalize deserving. But he was high off his own optimistic ideals.

_There is definitely nothing “more” I don’t even think we’re officially friends yet. More like uuuuhh acquaintances with benefits _

**OHOHO??? **

Glimmer immediately regretted her word choice, laughing as she buried her face in her hands.

_NOT LIKE THAT. PERVERT. _

She waited for Bow’s answer, laughing quietly at their ridiculous conversation. As the little dots marched to indicate Bow’s typing, a buzz and flag altered Glimmer that Adora had responded.

_She texted back gotta go _

Switching once more to her and Adora’s conversation, the first thing Glimmer found herself marveling at was her own stupidity. The giddy feeling that had been all-consuming now faded away as she reread her message. It sounded clingy and overly confident. It definitely felt worthy of the cringe the shuddered through her body and made her want to curl up in a ball. What had her euphoric-high brain been trying to do? Flirt? If so, she had desperately failed.

Still in embarrassed pain, she moved on to Adora’s message:

**How many times do I have to tell you YES I want to talk to you. **

**But there was something in particular I wanted to talk to you about **

The second part made Glimmer’s blood run cold. Adora continued typing but she didn’t dare respond, too frozen to type. All the stars that had been floating in her eyes crashed around her. So she did know. So Glimmer’s worst fears were reality. And there was nothing she could do about it now. After an eternity, Adora’s message finally jumped onto Glimmer’s screen.

**It’s about this morning. Well and today. And last night. Kinda. I just feel like I might have made you uncomfortable last night, like I was being really clingy so then this morning I felt really awkward and I’m sorry if I came off as cold or anything. And then in class you seemed all tense and I was just wondering if I had crossed some lines or anything? **

Glimmer could have sworn she heard a record scratch in her head, nearly getting whiplash from reading Adora’s message. The situation kept switching so quickly; as soon as she got one foot on the rug, it would be pulled out from under her and she would look down and it turn out she had been standing on raft in the middle of the ocean the entire time.

She squinted to reread the message one more time and gave a breathy laugh when she had determined she had read it correctly the first time. _Adora_ was the one that thought she had crossed lines? It was ridiculous. It seemed so unrealistic, Glimmer nearly slipped into her original thinking of Adora. If only she hadn’t been forced to see that nuclear core that made up that crazy blonde. That would have made everything so much easier. She could just brush the whole message as a ploy to gain sympathy. But know she had to know better. Now, she had to acknowledge that Adora was being completely sincere.

Glimmer had no idea how to respond. Adora was being completely open, completely vulnerable; and it was terrifying. It was almost worse than when she was wrapped up in doubt. It was the difference between not knowing why someone was ill and knowing exactly what was wrong- all while being expected to find the solution. Except Glimmer wasn’t a doctor. She had no cure for the situation.

She forced confidence, pushing away all her question just long enough to respond.

_Are you going to make a habit of sending me essays? _

She immediately regretted how cold she sounded and hurriedly began trying to remedy the conversation.

_I’m sorry but really you’re fine. I didn’t mind you... if I came across as stiff or weird about anything it’s just because I’m not really used to people getting that close that quickly _

It wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t the complete truth either, but it was close enough for now.

**oh god I’m really sorry **

_What no?? I just said it was fine?? _

**Still... that really sounds like I made you uncomfortable **

Glimmer let out a sigh. She never thought she’d find herself trying to convince someone she was becoming increasingly infatuated with that it was ok to be close with her. It sounded strange when she thought about, but there was something endearing about how Adora barreled her way into Glimmer’s life and was now trying tiptoe out of the china shop.

_I was a little surprised that’s all. You’re all good _

**Really? Even after I said I would kill weaver in class today?? You didn’t think that was weird??! **

_No lmao again I was a bit surprised but I mostly thought it was funny _

**You sure about that **

_Yep 100% _

**If you were in person right now you would hear me go hmmmmmmm **

Glimmer snorted quietly out of her nose; Adora made her laugh at the stupidest things. She was entirely convinced that she would never be as funny as Adora, but she hoped she could bring her at least just a little bit of happiness.

_Yeah well if you were in person right now you would see me roll my eyes and yell at you to stop being dumb_

A shallow pain spread across Glimmer’s chest, a coat of lead paint over her heart; milky indigo weighing her down. If only Adora’s casual jokes were a reality. If only she were face to face with Adora. If only Adora’s face was inches from her own and quickly coming closer. Glimmer’s hands ached to run through Adora’s hair and her ears cried to hear Adora’s voice. She didn’t want to look anywhere if it wasn’t into the storm of Adora’s eyes. Her throat was hoarse from emotion but she would sing if it meant she could bear witness once more to the way Adora wove melodies out of the air.

Glimmer sat up as if startled from a dream. _This- this, oh no. Oh shit. This has gone much too far. You should have stopped this before it even started. How did you even let this happen? _

Glimmer had know Adora was beautiful since she saw her on the first day of school. Ignoring her and twisting her into some villain had made it a simple thing to deal with, but she couldn’t ignore the iceberg once her Titanic had begun sinking. And now she was officially sunk, water far above her head and no hope of survival to be seen.

There was a sliver of Glimmer- some crazy little fraction of her mind that had to scream to be heard- that just wanted to rip the band aid off. She wanted to stop giving all the power to other people. If someone was going to tell Adora that Glimmer had hopelessly fallen for her, it might as well come from the source.

She looked down at her phone, suddenly aware that Adora had responded.

**Hey I gotta go I just wanted to check that we were ok! I’m glad you don’t mind me lmao **

Glimmer took a deep breath, making an attempt to gather her thoughts. It was a hopeless effort, her mind fragmented across the room. Did Adora really worry that Glimmer “minded” her? Was there in way to describe the burning that struck in her chest whenever Adora gave her one of those soft grins- that dull ache that constricted her heart and seeped through her ribs. How could she ever reassure Adora she could never be bothersome when every one of her actions struck Glimmer with wonder? How could she even attempt to say such a thing with revealing everything, admitting her mind’s greatest fear? How could she try to convince Adora of something that she couldn’t even admit to herself. 

Because the answer was quite simple. She loved Adora. Deeply and painfully. But no matter how perfect Adora was, it still felt dangerous to love her. To Glimmer, it was just as good as putting a target on her back. It was like saying _HEY EVERYONE!! I’M ALREADY WEIRD AND SO SO DIFFERENT FROM YOU AND NOW I’M PUTTING THAT ON DISPLAY! _

Glimmer was being pulled apart. She knew she _shouldn’t _show her affection to Adora. But she knew just as deeply and far more truly that she loved Adora- and keeping that inside of her would break her heart. 

She threw or phone and thoughts (momentarily) aside, flopping backwards on her bed. Her body bounced slightly from the force of throwing herself down and it only added to the sensation that her head was floating away. There was just too much to tackle right now. Glimmer could tell from the growing pressure on her head that if she kept picking it all apart, the pressure would quickly shift; it would tighten around her lungs, making it hard to breathe and squeezing what she couldn’t force down to pour down her face. 

Glimmer took a deep breath, through her nose and out her mouth- once, twice, three times, she lost count as she focused solely on the rhythm she was creating. These past few days had been chaotic and exhausting and good part of that had been created by her. She was tired. Her brain felt heavy as gravity retook control over her head. In fact, her whole body felt heavy; she was sinking deeper into her mattress with every exhale. 

—————————————————————— 

When Glimmer woke up, the last hues of dusk just barely reached her window. It was obvious that the night had happily creeped onwards while she had slept. She must have been out for at least an hour.

Down the hall, she could hear voices of some TV show her mom was watching as they flickered out of the speakers. 

Glimmer opened her door, peaking around the frame and looking down the hall. She could just see the top of her mother’s pastel hair above the top of the couch. In front of her, what looked like Hell’s Kitchen was playing. Glimmer was somewhat amazed that she had been able to sleep through Gordon Ramsey’s yelling.

She walked towards the living room and sat down next to Angella on the couch. She was asleep, hair mussed up in the back as she leaned up against the cushions. Glimmer felt a wave of affection wash over her. Whatever happened at school, whatever happened with Adora- _hell_, whatever happened within herself- she would always love her mother. Sometimes things got in the way of her remembering that.

Glimmer nudged her mom gently in the side, “Hey, wake up.”

Angella stirred, smiling as her gaze fell upon Glimmer, “Hey, dear.”

Glimmer squirmed under her mother’s softness, guilt over how she had acted earlier hitting her, “I’m really sorry. About how I treated you at dinner. I was really rude and nights like this are basically the only time we have together; I shouldn’t waste them being a brat to you.”

“You’re a teenager and we don’t exactly see eye to eye on everything- I expect this sort of thing to happen occasionally.”

“But I-“ Glimmer tried to argue but was cut off.

“But I appreciate you apologizing.”

“Mom!!” Glimmer felt like her mother should have been angrier, should have at least told her off for stomping down to her room as rudely as she had. And she had done it in response to her mom just trying her best to help. That must have hurt.

“Glimmer!!” Angella mirrored her daughter’s exasperation, “You really think I didn’t slam doors and yell and act out when I was your age? I don’t necessarily like it, but a little angsty rebellion is normal. Like I said, I expect some of this.”

“If you say so… just don’t expect to see it often,” Glimmer felt a smile tugging on the corners of her mouth. Her mom wasn’t exactly the most relaxed person but she understood Glimmer better than probably anybody else on the planet.

“Good,” Angella reached out and tucked one of Glimmer’s fluffy locks behind her ear, “I prefer when you talk to me instead of just hiding away in your room.”

“Yeah,” Glimmer laughed somewhat nervously because she _totally_ didn’t do exactly that most of the time instead of talking to people.

“So… you want to tell me about that girl now?”

Glimmer tucked herself next to Angella’s side and turned to face the TV where Gordon Ramsey was berating a man for having rats in his kitchen, “No, not yet.”

She felt her mother shrug and smiled as Angella wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Drama could wait. And if she loved Adora? Well, she would deal with that later too. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading- I hope you enjoyed!  
If you did, please consider leaving a kudo or a comment (they really do mean the world to me)  
Love you all and I’ll see you soon 🖤✨


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